WORKS  BY  GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON 

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G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

27  AND  29  WEST  TWENTY-THIRD  STREET,  NEW  YORK 


A 

Rebel's  Recollections 


By 
George  Gary  Eggleston 

iuthor  of  "  Dorothy  South,"  "A  Captain  in  the  Ranks' 
"  Running  the  River,"  etc. 


Fourth  Edition,  with  an  additional  chapter  on  the 
Old  Regime  ia  the  Old  Dominion 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

CTbc  fmfcfcerbocfcer  jpuess 

1905 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1874,  by 

GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington 


Copyright,  1905 

by 
GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON 


DEDICATION. 

I  WISH  to  dedicate  this  book  to  my  brother, 
EDWARD  EGGLESTON  ;  and  even  if  there  were 
no  motives  of  affection  impelling  me  thereto,  I 
should  still  feel  bound  to  inscribe  his  name 
upon  this  page,  as  an  act  of  justice,  in  order 
that  those  critics  who  confounded  me  with  him, 
when  I  put  forth  a  little  novel  a  year  ago,  may 
have  no  chance  to  hold  him  responsible  for  my 
political  as  they  did  for  my  literary  sins. 


241406 


PREFACE   TO   THE   FOURTH 
EDITION. 


"A  REBEL'S  RECOLLECTIONS"  was 
published  in  1874.  It  has  ever  since 
enjoyed  a  degree  of  public  favor  that  is 
perhaps  beyond  its  merits. 

However  that  may  be,  my  friends 
among  the  historians  and  the  critical 
students  of  history  have  persuaded  me 
that,  for  the  sake  of  historical  complete 
ness,  I  should  include  in  this  new  edition 
of  the  book  the  prefatory  essay  on  "The 
Old  Regime  in  the  Old  Dominion,"  which 
first  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for 
November,  1875. 

I  am  doing  so  with  the  generous  per 
mission  of  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin,  & 
Co.,  publishers  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly. 


vi  Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition. 

The  scholars  have  said  to  me  and  to 
my  publishers  that  during  its  thirty  years 
of  life  the  book  has  become  a  part  of  that 
body  of  literature  to  which  historians 
must  look  as  the  sources  of  history. 
They  have  urged  that  the  introductory 
chapter,  now  for  the  first  time  included 
in  the  volume,  is  an  essential  part  of  that 
material  of  history. 

The  story  of  the  book  and  of  this  intro 
ductory  chapter  may,  perhaps,  have  some 
interest  for  the  reader.  In  that  belief  I 
tell  it  here. 

In  the  year,  1873,  I  was  editing  the 
weekly  periodical,  Hearth  and  Home.  I 
went  to  Boston  to  secure  certain  contri 
butions  of  literary  matter.  There,  for  the 
first  time,  I  met  Mr.  William  Dean 
Howells,  then  editor  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly, — now  recognized  as  the  fore 
most  creative  and  critical  writer  of 
America. 

In  the  course  of  our  conversation,  Mr. 


Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition,  vii 

Howells  asked  me  why  I  should  not  write 
my  reminiscences  of  life  as  a  Southern 
soldier.  At  that  time  war  passions  had 
only  just  begun  to  cool,  and  so  I  an 
swered  that  it  would  be  hardly  fair  to  the 
publishers  of  Hearth  and  Home  for  me  in 
that  way  to  thrust  upon  the  readers  of 
that  periodical  the  fact  that  its  editor  had 
been  a  Rebel  soldier. 

"Oh,  I  did  n't  mean,"  answered  Mr. 
Howells,  "that  you  should  write  your 
reminiscences  for  Hearth  and  Home.  I 
want  you  to  write  them  for  the  At 
lantic." 

I  put  the  matter  aside  for  a  time.  I 
wanted  to  think  of  it,  and  I  wanted  to 
consult  my  friends  concerning  the  pro 
priety  of  doing  what  Mr.  Howells  had 
suggested.  Then  it  was  that  I  talked 
with  Oliver  Johnson,  and  received  from 
him  the  advice  reported  in  the  preface  to 
the  first  edition  of  this  book,  which  is 
printed  on  another  page. 


viii  Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition. 

An  arrangement  was  at  once  made  with 
Mr.  Howells  that  I  should  write  seven  of 
the  nine  papers  composing  the  book,  for 
publication  in  the  Atlantic,  the  two  other 
papers  being  reserved  in  order  to  "give 
freshness"  to  the  volume  when  it  should 
appear. 

After  the  first  paper  was  published, 
Mr.  Howells  wrote  me  that  it  had  brought 
a  hornets'  nest  about  his  ears,  but  that 
he  was  determined  to  go  on  with  the 
series. 

After  the  second  paper  appeared,  he 
wrote  me  a  delightful  letter,  saying  that 
the  hornets  had  "begun  to  sing  psalms  in 
his  ears,"  in  view  of  the  spirit  and  temper 
of  my  work. 

After  all  the  papers  were  published,  and 
on  the  day  on  which  the  book,  with  its 
two  additional  chapters,  appeared,  there 
was  held  at  the  Parker  House  in  Boston 
a  banquet  in  celebration  of  the  fifteenth 
anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the  Atlan- 


Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition,  ix 

tic.  At  that  dinner,  and  without  warn 
ing,  I  was  toasted  as  the  author  of  the 
latest  book  of  Civil  War  reminiscences.  I 
made  a  feeble  little  speech  in  reply,  but  I 
found  that  the  spirit  in  which  I  had  writ 
ten  "A  Rebel's  Recollections"  had  met 
with  cordial  response  from  the  New  Eng 
land  audience.  A  company  of  "original 
abolitionists"  had  even  planned  to  give 
me  a  dinner,  all  my  own,  with  nobody 
present  but  original  abolitionists  and  my 
Rebel  self. 

In  the  same  way  the  book  was  received 
by  the  press,  especially  in  New  England, 
until  I  was  satisfied  that  my  work  had 
really  ministered  somewhat  to  that  recon 
ciliation  between  North  and  South  which 
I  had  hoped  to  help  forward. 

Some  months  later,  in  1875,  I  wrote 
the  article  on  the  old  Virginian  life,  and 
sent  it  to  Mr.  Howells.  Mindful  of  his 
editorial  injunction  to  confine  articles  to 
six  magazine  pages  in  length,  I  condensed 


x    Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition. 

what  I  had  to  say  into  that  space.  Then 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  had  an  ex 
perience  which  has  never  since  been  re 
peated.  Mr.  Howells  sent  the  article 
back  to  me  with  a  request  that  I  should 
double  its  length. 

Some  years  later,  the  Authors  Club 
gave  a  reception  to  Mr.  Howells  as  our 
foremost  living  novelist,  and  it  fell  to  me, 
as  the  presiding  officer  of  the  club's 
Executive  Council,  to  escort  the  guest  of 
the  evening  to  the  club.  The  war  papers 
of  the  Century  Magazine  were  at  that 
time  attracting  a  country-wide  attention. 
As  we  drove  to  the  club,  Mr.  Howells 
said  to  me : 

"It  was  you  and  I  who  first  conceived 
the  idea  of  'War  Papers'  as  a  magazine's 
chief  feature.  We  were  a  trifle  ahead  of 
our  time,  I  suppose,  but  our  thought  was 
the  same  as  that  which  has  since  achieved 
so  great  a  success." 

In  view  of  all  these  things,  I  inscribe 


Preface  to  the  Fourth  Edition,    xi 

this  new  and  expanded  edition  of  "  A 
Rebel's  Recollections"  to  the  true  god 
father  of  the  book, — to 

WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS, 

with  admiration  for  his  genius,  with  a 
grateful  recollection  of  his  helpfulness, 
and  with  personal  affection. 

GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON. 

THE  AUTHORS  CLUB, 
January,  1905. 


PREFACE. 

LUNCHING  one  day  witn  Oliver  Johnson 
the  best  "  original  abolitionist "  I  ever  knew, 
I  submitted  to  him  the  question  I  was  de 
bating  with  myself,  namely,  whether  I  might 
write  this  little  volume  of  reminiscences 
without  fear  of  offending  excellent  people, 
or,  still  worse,  reanimating  prejudices  that 
happily  were  dying.  His  reply  was,  "  Write, 
by  all  means.  Prejudice  is  the  first-born  of 
ignorance,  and  it  never  outlives  its  father. 
The  only  thing  necessary  now  to  the  final 
burial  of  the  animosity  existing  between  the 
sections  is  that  the  North  and  the  South 
shall  learn  to  know  and  understand  each 
other.  Anything  which  contributes  to  this 
hastens  the  day  of  peace  and  harmony  and 
brotherly  love  which  every  good  man  longs 
for" 


xiv  Preface. 

Upon  this  hint  I  have  written,  and  if  the 
reading  of  these  pages  shall  serve,  in  never 
so  small  a  degree,  to  strengthen  the  kindly 
feelings  which  have  grown  up  of  late  be 
tween  the  foemen  of  ten  years  ago,  I  shall 
think  my  labor  well  expended. 

I  have  written  chiefly  of  the  things  I  saw 
for  myself,  and  yet  this  is  in  no  sense  the 
story  of  my  personal  adventures.  I  never 
wore  a  star  on  my  collar,  and  every  reader 
of  military  novels  knows  that  adventures 
worth  writing  about  never  befall  a  soldier 
below  the  rank  of  major. 

G  C.  E. 

October,  1874. 


CONTENTS. 


PACT 

I.  THE  MUSTERING          ....  i 

II.  THE  MEN  WHO  MADE  THE  ARMY          .  29 

III.  THE  TEMPER  OF  THE  WOMEN           .        .  56 

IV.  OF    THE    TIME   WHEN    MONEY    WAS 

"EASY" 77 

V.  THE  CHEVALIER  OF  THE  LOST  CAUSE      .  108 
VI.  LEE,  JACKSON,  AND   SOME  LESSER  WOR 
THIES         138 

VII.  SOME  QUEER  PEOPLE              ...  169 

VIII.  RED  TAPE           193 

IX.  THE  END,  AND  AFTER            ...  229 


THE     OLD    REGIME     IN    THE    OLD 
DOMINION. 

IT  was  a  very  beautiful  and  enjoyable 
life  that  the  Virginians  led  in  that  ancient 
time,  for  it  certainly  seems  ages  ago,  be 
fore  the  war  came  to  turn  ideas  upside 
down  and  convert  the  picturesque  com 
monwealth  into  a  commonplace,  modern 
state.  It  was  a  soft,  dreamy,  deliciously 
quiet  life,  a  life  of  repose,  an  old  life, 
with  all  its  sharp  corners  and  rough  sur 
faces  long  ago  worn  round  and  smooth. 
Everything  fitted  everything  else,  and 
every  point  in  it  was  so  well  settled  as  to 
leave  no  work  of  improvement  for  any 
body  to  do.  The  Virginians  were  satis 
fied  with  things  as  they  were,  and  if  there 
were  reformers  born  among  them,  they 
went  elsewhere  to  work  changes.  Society 
in  the  Old  Dominion  was  like  a  well  rolled 


xviii  The  Old  Regime. 

and  closely  packed  gravel  walk,  in  which 
each  pebble  has  found  precisely  the  place 
it  fits  best.  There  was  no  giving  way 
under  one's  feet,  no  uncomfortable  grind 
ing  of  loose  materials  as  one  walked  about 
over  the  firm  and  long-used  ways  of  the 
Virginian  social  life. 

Let  me  hasten  to  say  that  I  do  not  alto 
gether  approve  of  that  life  by  any  means. 
That  would  be  flat  blasphemy  against  the 
god  Progress,  and  I  have  no  stomach  for 
martyrdom,  even  of  our  modern,  fireless 
sort.  I  frankly  admit  in  the  outset, 
therefore,  that  the  Virginians  of  that  old 
time,  between  which  and  the  present 
there  is  so  great  a  gulf  fixed,  were  idle 
people.  I  am  aware  that  they  were, 
when  I  lived  among  them,  extravagant 
for  the  most  part,  and  in  debt  altogether. 
It  were  useless  to  deny  that  they  habitu 
ally  violated  all  the  wise  precepts  laid 
down  in  the  published  writings  of  Poor 
Richard,  and  set  at  naught  the  whole 


The  Old  Regime.  xix 

gospel  of  thrift.  But  their  way  of  living 
was  nevertheless  a  very  agreeable  one  to 
share  or  to  contemplate,  the  more  be 
cause  there  was  nothing  else  like  it  any 
where  in  the  land. 

A  whole  community,  with  as  nearly  as 
possible  nothing  to  do,  is  apt  to  develop 
a  considerable  genius  for  enjoyment,  and 
the  Virginians,  during  somewhat  more 
than  two  centuries  of  earnest  and  united 
effort  in  that  direction,  had  partly  dis 
covered  and  partly  created  both  a  science 
and  an  art  of  pleasant  living.  Add  to 
idleness  and  freedom  from  business  cares 
a  climate  so  perfect  that  existence  itself  is 
a  luxury  within  their  borders,  and  we 
shall  find  no  room  for  wonder  that  these 
people  learned  how  to  enjoy  themselves. 
What  they  learned,  in  this  regard,  they 
remembered  too.  Habits  and  customs 
once  found  good  were  retained,  I  will  not 
say  carefully, —  for  that  would  imply 
effort,  and  the  Virginians  avoided  effort 


xx  The  Old  Regime. 

always, — but  tenaciously.  The  Virginians 
were  born  conservatives,  constitutionally 
opposed  to  change.  They  loved  the  old 
because  it  was  old,  and  disliked  the  new, 
if  for  no  better  reason,  because  it  was 
new ;  for  newness  and  rawness  were  well- 
nigh  the  same  in  their  eyes. 

This  constitutional  conservatism,  with 
out  which  their  mode  of  life  could  never 
have  been  what  it  was,  was  nourished  by 
both  habit  and  circumstance.  The  Vir 
ginians  were  not  much  given  to  travelling 
beyond  their  own  borders,  and  when  they 
did  go  into  the  outer  world  it  was  only  to 
find  a  manifestation  of  barbarism  in  every 
departure  from  their  own  prescriptive 
standards  and  models.  Not  that  they 
were  more  bigoted  than  other  people,  for 
in  truth  I  think  they  were  not,  but  their 
bigotry  took  a  different  direction.  They 
thought  well  of  the  old  and  the  moss- 
grown,  just  as  some  people  admire  all 
that  is  new  and  garish  and  fashionable. 


The  Old  Regime.  xxi 

But  chief  among  the  causes  of  that  con 
servatism  which  gave  tone  and  color  to 
the  life  we  are  considering  was  the  fact 
that  ancient  estates  were  carefully  kept  in 
ancient  families,  generation  after  genera 
tion.  If  a  Virginian  lived  in  a  particular 
mansion,  it  was  strong  presumptive  proof 
that  his  father,  his  grandfather,  and  his 
great-grandfather  had  lived  there  before 
him.  There  was  no  law  of  primogeniture 
to  be  sure  by  which  this  was  brought 
about,  but  there  were  well-established  cus 
toms  which  amounted  to  the  same  thing. 
Family  pride  was  a  ruling  passion,  and 
not  many  Virginians  of  the  better  class 
hesitated  to  secure  the  maintenance  of 
their  family  place  in  the  ranks  of  the  un- 
titled  peerage  by  the  sacrifice  of  their  own 
personal  prosperity,  if  that  were  neces 
sary,  as  it  sometimes  was.  To  the  first 
born  son  went  the  estate  usually,  by  the 
will  of  the  father  and  with  the  hearty  con 
currence  of  the  younger  sons,  when  there 


xxii  The  Old  Regime. 

happened  to  be  any  such.  The  eldest 
brother  succeeded  the  father  as  the  head 
of  the  house,  and  took  upon  himself  the 
father's  duties  and  the  father's  burdens. 
Upon  him  fell  the  management  of  the 
estate ;  the  maintenance  of  the  mansion, 
which,  under  the  laws  of  hospitality  ob 
taining  there,  was  no  light  task;  the 
education  of  the  younger  sons  and  daugh 
ters;  and  last,  though  commonly  not  by 
any  means  least,  the  management  of  the 
hereditary  debt.  The  younger  children 
always  had  a  home  in  the  old  mansion, 
secured  to  them  by  the  will  of  their  father 
sometimes,  but  secure  enough  in  any  case 
by  a  custom  more  binding  than  any  law ; 
and  there  were  various  other  ways  of  pro 
viding  for  them.  If  the  testator  were 
rich,  he  divided  among  them  his  bonds, 
stocks,  and  other  personal  property  not 
necessary  to  the  prosperity  of  the  estate, 
or  charged  the  head  of  the  house  with  the 
payment  of  certain  legacies  to  each.  The 


The  Old  Regime.          xxiii 

mother's  property,  if  she  had  brought  a 
dower  with  her,  was  usually  portioned 
out  among  them,  and  the  law,  medicine, 
army,  navy,  and  church  offered  them  gen 
teel  employment  if  they  chose  to  set  up 
for  themselves.  But  these  arrangements 
were  subsidiary  to  the  main  purpose  of 
keeping  the  estate  in  the  family,  and 
maintaining  the  mansion-house  as  a  seat 
of  elegant  hospitality.  So  great  was  the 
importance  attached  to  this  last  point, 
and  so  strictly  was  its  observance  enjoined 
upon  the  new  lord  of  the  soil,  that  he  was 
frequently  the  least  to  be  envied  of  all. 

I  remember  a  case  in  which  a  neighbor  of 
my  own,  a  very  wealthy  gentleman,  whose 
house  was  always  open  and  always  full  of 
guests,  dying,  left  each  of  his  children  a 
plantation.  To  the  eldest  son,  however, 
he  gave  the  home  estate,  worth  three  or 
four  times  as  much  as  any  of  the  other 
plantations,  and  with  it  he  gave  the  young 
man  also  a  large  sum  of  money.  But  he 


xxiv  The  Old  Regime. 

charged  him  with  the  duty  of  keeping 
open  house  there,  at  all  times,  and  directed 
that  the  household  affairs  should  be  con 
ducted  always  precisely  as  they  had  been 
during  his  own  lifetime.  The  charge 
well-nigh  outweighed  the  inheritance. 
The  new  master  of  the  place  lived  in  Rich 
mond,  where  he  was  engaged  in  manufac 
turing,  and  after  the  death  of  the  father 
the  old  house  stood  tenantless,  but  open 
as  before.  Its  troops  of  softly  shod  serv 
ants  swept  and  dusted  and  polished  as 
of  old.  Breakfast,  dinner,  and  supper 
were  laid  out  every  day  at  the  accustomed 
hours,  under  the  old  butler's  supervision, 
and  as  the  viands  grew  cold  his  silent 
subordinates  waited,  trays  in  hand,  at  the 
back  of  the  empty  chairs  during  the  full 
time  appointed  for  each  meal.  I  have 
stopped  there  for  dinner,  tea,  or  to  spend 
the  night  many  a  time,  in  company  with 
one  of  the  younger  sons  who  lived  else 
where,  or  with  some  relative  of  the  family, 


The  Old  Regime.  xxv 

or  alone,  as  the  case  might  be,  and  I  have 
sometimes  met  others  there.  But  our 
coming  or  not  was  a  matter  of  indiffer 
ence.  Guests  knew  themselves  always 
welcome,  but  whether  guests  came  or  not 
the  household  affairs  suffered  no  change. 
The  destruction  of  the  house  by  fire 
finally  lifted  this  burden  from  its  master's 
shoulders,  as  the  will  did  not  require  him 
to  rebuild.  But  while  it  stood,  its  master's 
large  inheritance  was  of  very  small  worth 
to  him.  And  in  many  other  cases  the 
preference  given  to  the  eldest  son  in  the 
distribution  of  property  was  in  reality 
only  a  selection  of  his  shoulders  to  bear 
the  family's  burdens. 

In  these  and  other  ways,  old  estates  of 
greater  or  less  extent  were  kept  together, 
and  old  families  remained  lords  of  the 
soil.  It  is  not  easy  to  overestimate  the 
effect  of  this  upon  the  people.  A  man 
to  whom  a  great  estate,  with  an  historic 
house  upon  it  and  an  old  family  name 


xxvi  The  Old  Regime. 

attached  to  it,  has  descended  through 
several  generations,  could  hardly  be  other 
than  a  conservative  in  feeling  and  influ 
ence.  These  people  were  the  inheritors 
of  the  old  and  the  established.  Upon 
them  had  devolved  the  sacred  duty  of 
maintaining  the  reputation  of  a  family 
name.  They  were  no  longer  mere  indi 
viduals,  whose  acts  affected  only  them 
selves,  but  were  chiefs  and  representatives 
of  honorable  houses,  and  as  such  bound 
to  maintain  a  reputation  of  vastly  more 
worth  than  their  own.  Their  fathers  be 
fore  them  were  their  exemplars,  and  in  a 
close  adherence  to  family  customs  and 
traditions  lay  their  safety  from  unseemly 
lapses.  The  old  furniture,  the  old  wain 
scot  on  the  walls,  the  old  pictures,  the 
old  house  itself,  perpetually  warned  them 
against  change  as  in  itself  unbecoming 
and  dangerous  to  the  dignity  of  their  race. 
And  so  changes  were  unknown  in  their 
social  system.  As  their  fathers  lived,  so 


The  Old  Regime.         xxvii 

lived  they,  and  there  was  no  feature  of 
their  life  pleasanter  than  its  fixity.  One 
always  knew  what  to  expect  and  what  to 
do ;  there  were  no  perplexing  uncertain 
ties  to  breed  awkwardness  and  vexation. 
There  was  no  room  for  shams  and  no 
temptation  to  vulgar  display,  and  so 
shams  and  display  had  no  chance  to  be 
come  fashionable. 

Aside  from  the  fact  that  the  old  and  the 
substantial  were  the  respectable,  the  so 
cial  status  of  every  person  was  so  fixed 
and  so  well  known  that  display  was  un 
necessary  on  the  part  of  the  good  families, 
and  useless  on  the  part  of  others.  The 
old  ladies  constituted  a  college  of  heralds 
and  could  give  you  at  a  moment's  notice 
any  pedigree  you  might  choose  to  ask  for. 
The  "goodness"  of  a  good  family  was  a 
fixed  fact  and  needed  no  demonstration, 
and  no  parvenu  could  work  his  way  into 
the  charmed  circle  by  vulgar  ostentation 
or  by  any  other  means  whatever.  As  one 


xxviii         The  Old  Regime. 

of  the  old  dames  used  to  phrase  it,  osten 
tatious  people  were  thought  to  be  "rich 
before  they  were  ready." 

As  the  good  families  gave  law  to  the 
society  of  the  land,  so  their  chiefs  ruled 
the  State  in  a  more  positive  and  direct 
sense.  The  plantation  owners,  as  a  mat 
ter  of  course,  constituted  only  a  minority 
of  the  voting  population,  at  least  after 
the  constitution  of  1850  swept  away  the 
rule  making  the  ownership  of  real  estate 
a  necessary  qualification  for  suffrage;  but 
they  governed  the  State  nevertheless  as 
completely  as  if  they  had  been  in  the 
majority.  Families  naturally  followed 
the  lead  of  their  chiefs,  voting  together 
as  a  matter  of  clan  pride,  when  no  prin 
ciple  was  involved,  and  so  the  plantation 
owners  controlled  directly  a  large  part  of 
the  population.  But  a  more  important 
point  was  that  the  ballot  was  wholly  un 
known  in  Virginia  until  after  the  war,  and 
as  the  large  landowners  were  deservedly 


The  Old  Rdgime.  xxix 

men  of  influence  in  the  community,  they 
had  little  difficulty,  under  a  system  of 
viva-voce  voting,  in  carrying  things  their 
own  way  on  all  matters  on  which  they 
were  at  all  agreed  among  themselves.  It 
often  happened  that  a  Whig  would  con 
tinue  year  after  year  to  represent  a 
Democratic  district,  or  vice  versa,  in  the 
Legislature  or  in  Congress,  merely  by 
force  of  his  large  family  connection  and 
influence. 

All  this  was  an  evil,  if  we  choose  to 
think  it  so  It  was  undemocratic  certainly, 
but  it  worked  wonderfully  well,  and  the 
system  was  good  in  this  at  least,  that  it 
laid  the  foundations  of  politics  among  the 
wisest  and  best  men  the  State  had ;  for  as 
a  rule  the  planters  were  the  educated  men 
of  the  community,  the  reading  men,  the 
scholars,  the  thinkers,  and  well-nigh  every 
one  of  them  was  familiar  with  the  whole 
history  of  parties  and  of  statesmanship. 
Politics  was  deemed  a  necessary  part  of 


xxx  The  Old  Regime. 

every  gentleman's  education,  and  the 
youth  of  eighteen  who  could  not  recapitu 
late  the  doctrines  set  forth  in  the  resolu 
tions  of  1798,  or  tell  you  the  history  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise  or  the  Wilmot 
Proviso,  was  thought  lamentably  deficient 
in  the  very  rudiments  of  culture.  They 
had  little  to  do,  and  they  thought  it  the 
bounden  duty  of  every  free  American 
citizen  to  prepare  himself  for  the  intelli 
gent  performance  of  his  functions  in  the 
body  politic.  As  a  result,  if  Virginia  did 
not  always  send  wise  men  to  the  councils 
of  the  State  and  nation,  she  sent  no  politi 
cally  ignorant  ones  at  any  rate. 

It  was  a  point  of  honor  among  Virgin 
ians  never  to  shrink  from  any  of  the  duties 
of  a  citizen.  To  serve  as  road-overseer 
or  juryman  was  often  disagreeable  to  men 
who  loved  ease  and  comfort  as  they  did, 
but  every  Virginian  felt  himself  in  honor 
bound  to  serve  whenever  called  upon,  and 
that  without  pay,  too,  as  it  was  deemed 


The  Old  Rtgime.          xxxi 

in  the  last  degree  disreputable  to  accept 
remuneration  for  doing  the  plain  duty  of 
a  citizen. 

It  was  the  same  with  regard  to  the 
magistracy.  Magistrates  were  appointed 
until  1850,  and  after  that  chosen  by  elec 
tion,  but  under  neither  system  was  any 
man  free  to  seek  or  to  decline  the  office. 
Appointed  or  elected,  one  must  serve,  if 
he  would  not  be  thought  to  shirk  his  duties 
as  a  good  man  and  citizen  ;  and  though  the 
duties  of  the  office  were  sometimes  very 
onerous,  there  was  practically  no  return 
of  any  sort  made.  Magistrates  received 
no  salary,  and  it  was  not  customary  for 
them  to  accept  the  small  perquisites 
allowed  them  by  law.  Under  the  old 
constitution,  the  senior  justice  of  each 
county  was  ex-officio  high  sheriff,  and  the 
farming  of  the  shrievalty — for  the  high 
sheriff  always  farmed  the  office — yielded 
some  pecuniary  profit ;  but  any  one  mag 
istrate's  chance  of  becoming  the  senior 


xxxii          The  Old  Regime. 

was  too  small  to  be  reckoned  in  the  ac 
count  ;  and  under  the  new  constitution  of 
1850  even  this  was  taken  away,  and  the 
sheriffs  were  elected  by  the  people.  But 
to  be  a  magistrate  was  deemed  an  honor, 
and  very  properly  so,  considering  the  na 
ture  of  a  Virginian  magistrate's  functions. 
The  magistrates  were  something  more 
than  justices  of  the  peace.  A  bench  of 
three  or  more  of  them  constituted  the 
County  Court,  a  body  having  a  wide  civil 
and  criminal  jurisdiction  of  its  own,  and 
concurrent  jurisdiction  with  the  Circuit 
Court  over  a  still  larger  field.  This  County 
Court  sat  monthly,  and  in  addition  to  its 
judicial  functions  was  charged  with  con 
siderable  legislative  duties  for  the  county, 
under  a  system  which  gave  large  recog 
nition  to  the  principle  of  local  self- 
government.  Four  times  a  year  it  held 
grand-jury  terms — an  anomaly  in  magis 
trate's  courts,  I  believe,  but  an  excellent 
one  as  experience  proved.  In  a  large 


The  Old  Regime.        xxxiii 

class  of  criminal  cases  a  bench  of  five 
justices,  sitting  in  regular  term,  was  a 
court  of  oyer  and  terminer. 

The  concurrent  jurisdiction  of  this 
County  Court,  as  I  have  said,  was  very 
large,  and  as  its  sessions  were  monthly, 
while  those  of  the  circuit  judges  were 
held  but  twice  a  year,  very  many  import 
ant  civil  suits  involving  considerable  in 
terests  were  brought  there  rather  than 
before  the  higher  tribunal.  And  here  we 
encounter  a  very  singular  fact.  The 
magistrates  were  usually  planters,  never 
lawyers,  and  yet,  as  the  records  show, 
the  proportion  of  County-Court  decisions 
reversed  on  appeal  for  error  was  always 
smaller  than  that  of  decisions  made  by 
the  higher  tribunals,  in  which  regular 
judges  sat.  At  the  first  glance  this  seems 
almost  incredible,  and  yet  it  is  a  fact,  and 
its  cause  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  magis 
trates,  being  unpaid  functionaries,  were 
chosen  for  their  fitness  only.  Their  elec- 


xxxiv         The  Old  Regime. 

tion  was  a  sort  of  choosing  of  arbitrators, 
and  the  men  elected  were  precisely  the 
kind  of  men  commonly  selected  by  honest 
disputants  as  umpires — men  of  integrity, 
probity,  and  intelligence.  They  came 
into  court  conscious  of  their  own  igno 
rance  of  legal  technicalities,  and  disposed 
to  decide  questions  upon  principles  of 
"right  between  man  and  man"  rather 
than  upon  the  letter  of  the  law;  and  as 
the  law  is,  in  the  main,  founded  upon 
precisely  these  principles  of  abstract  jus 
tice,  their  decision  usually  proved  sound 
in  law  as  well  as  right  in  fact. 

But  the  magistrates  were  not  wholly 
without  instruction  even  in  technical  mat 
ters  of  law.  They  learned  a  good  deal  by 
long  service, — their  experience  often  run 
ning  over  a  period  of  thirty  or  forty  years 
on  the  bench, — and,  in  addition  to  the 
skill  which  intelligent  men  must  have 
gained  in  this  way,  they  had  still  another 
resource.  When  the  bench  thought  it 


The  Old  Regime.          xxxv 

necessary  to  inform  itself  on  a  legal  point, 
the  presiding  magistrate  asked  in  open 
court  for  the  advice  of  counsel,  and  in 
such  an  event  every  lawyer  not  engaged 
in  the  case  at  bar,  or  in  another  involving 
a  like  principle,  was  under  obligation  to 
give  a  candid  expression  of  his  opinion. 

The  system  was  a  very  peculiar  and  in 
teresting  one,  and  in  Virginia  it  was  about 
the  best  also  that  could  have  been  hit 
upon,  though  it  is  more  than  doubtful 
whether  it  would  work  equally  well  any 
where  else.  All  the  conditions  surround 
ing  it  were  necessary  to  its  success,  and 
those  conditions  were  of  a  kind  that  can 
not  be  produced  at  will ;  they  must  grow. 
In  the  first  place,  the  intelligence  and 
culture  of  a  community  must  not  be  con 
centrated  in  certain  centres,  as  is  usually 
the  case,  especially  in  commercial  and 
manufacturing  States,  but  must  be  dis 
tributed  pretty  evenly  over  the  country, 
else  the  material  out  of  which  such  a 


xxx vi         The  Old  Rdgime. 

magistracy  can  be  created  will  not  be 
where  it  is  needed  ;  and  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  it  cannot  be  imported  for  the 
purpose.  There  must  also  be  a  public 
sentiment  to  compel  the  best  men  to  serve 
when  chosen,  and  the  best  men  must  be 
men  of  wealth  and  leisure,  else  they  can 
not  afford  to  serve,  for  such  a  magistracy 
must  of  necessity  be  unpaid.  In  short, 
the  system  can  work  well  only  under  the 
conditions  which  gave  it  birth  in  Virginia, 
and  those  conditions  will  probably  never 
again  exist  in  any  of  these  States.  It  is 
a  matter  of  small  moment  to  the  citizen 
of  Massachusetts  or  New  York  that  Vir 
ginia  once  had  a  very  peculiar  judiciary; 
but  it  is  not  a  matter  of  light  importance 
that  our  scheme  of  government  leaves 
every  State  free  to  devise  for  itself  a  sys 
tem  of  local  institutions  adapted  to  its 
needs  and  the  character  and  situation  of 
its  people;  that  it  is  not  uniformity  we 
have  sought  and  secured  in  our  attempt 


The  Old  Rdgime.        xxxvii 

to  establish  a  government  by  the  people, 
but  a  wise  diversity  rather;  that  experi 
ence  and  not  theory  is  our  guide;  that 
our  institutions  are  cut  to  fit  our  needs, 
and  not  to  match  a  fixed  pattern ;  and 
that  the  necessities  of  one  part  of  the 
country  do  not  prescribe  a  rule  for  an 
other  part. 

But  this  is  not  a  philosophical  treatise. 
Return  we  therefore  to  the  region  of  small 
facts.  It  is  a  little  curious  that  with  their 
reputed  fondness  for  honorary  titles  of  all 
kinds,  the  Virginians  never  addressed  a 
magistrate  as  " judge,"  even  in  that  old 
time  when  the  functions  of  the  justice 
fairly  entitled  him  to  the  name.  And  it 
is  stranger  still,  perhaps,  that  in  Virginia 
the  members  of  the  Legislature  were 
never  called  "honorable,"  that  distinction 
being  held  strictly  in  reserve  for  members 
of  Congress  and  of  the  national  cabinet. 
This  fact  seems  all  the  more  singular 
when  we  remember  that  in  the  view  of 


xxxviii       The  Old  Regime. 

Virginians  the  States  were  nations,  while 
the  general  government  was  little  more 
than  their  accredited  agent,  charged  with 
the  performance  of  certain  duties  and 
holding  certain  delegated  powers  which 
were  subject  to  recall  at  any  time. 

I  have  said  that  every  educated  Virgin 
ian  was  acquainted  with  politics,  but  this 
is  only  half  the  truth.  They  knew  the 
details  quite  as  well  as  the  general  facts, 
and  there  were  very  many  of  them  not 
politicians  and  never  candidates  for  office 
of  any  kind  who  could  give  from  memory 
an  array  of  dates  and  other  figures  of 
which  the  Tribune  Almanac  would  have 
no  occasion  to  be  ashamed.  Not  to 
know  the  details  of  the  vote  in  Connecti 
cut  in  any  given  year  was  to  lay  oneself 
open  to  a  suspicion  of  incompetence;  to 
confess  forgetfulness  of  the  "ayes  and 
noes"  on  any  important  division  in 
Congress  was  to  rule  oneself  out  of  the 
debate  as  an  ignoramus.  I  say  debate 


The  Old  Rtgime.         xxxix 

advisedly,  for  there  was  always  a  debate 
on  political  matters  when  two  Virginia 
gentlemen  met  anywhere  except  in  church 
during  sermon  time.  They  argued  earn 
estly,  excitedly,  sometimes  even  violently, 
but  ordinarily  without  personal  ill-feeling. 
In  private  houses  they  could  not  quarrel, 
being  gentlemen  and  guests  of  a  common 
host,  or  standing  in  the  relation  of  guest 
and  host  to  each  other;  in  more  public 
places — for  they  discussed  politics  in  all 
places  and  at  all  times — they  refrained 
from  quarrelling  because  to  quarrel  would 
not  have  been  proper.  But  they  never 
lost  an  opportunity  to  make  political 
speeches  to  each  other  ;  alternately, 
sometimes,  but  quite  as  often  both,  or 
all,  at  once. 

It  would  sometimes  happen,  of  course, 
that  two  or  more  gentlemen  meeting 
would  find  themselves  agreed  in  their 
views,  but  the  pleasure  of  indulging  in  a 
heated  political  discussion  was  never  fore- 


xl  The  Old  Regime. 

gone  for  any  such  paltry  reason  as  that. 
Finding  no  point  on  which  they  could 
disagree,  they  would  straightway  join 
forces  and  do  valiant  battle  against  the 
common  enemy.  That  the  enemy  was 
not  present  to  answer  made  no  difference. 
They  knew  all  his  positions  and  all  the 
arguments  by  which  his  views  could  be 
sustained  quite  as  well  as  he  did,  and 
they  combated  these.  It  was  funny,  of 
course,  but  the  participants  in  these  one 
sided  debates  never  seemed  to  see  the 
ludicrous  points  of  the  picture. 

A  story  is  told  of  one  of  the  fiercest  of 
these  social  political  debaters — a  story 
too  well  vouched  for  among  his  friends  to 
be  doubted — which  will  serve,  perhaps, 
to  show  how  unnecessary  the  presence  of 
an  antagonist  was  to  the  successful  con 
duct  of  a  debate.  It  was  "at  a  dining- 
day,"  to  speak  in  the  native  idiom,  and 
it  so  happened  that  all  the  guests  were 
Whigs,  except  Mr.  E ,  who  was  the 


The  Old  Regime.  xli 

staunchest  of  Jeffersonian  Democrats. 
The  discussion  began,  of  course,  as  soon 
as  the  women  left  the  table,  and  it  speed 
ily  waxed  hot.  Mr.  E ,  getting  the 

ear  of  the  company  at  the  outset,  laid  on 
right  and  left  with  his  customary  vigor, 
rasping  the  Whigs  on  their  sorest  points, 
arguing,  asserting,  denouncing,  demon 
strating  —  to  his  own  entire  satisfaction 
—  for  perhaps  half  an  hour;  silencing 
every  attempt  at  interruption  by  saying: 
"Now  wait,  please,  till  I  get  through; 
I  'm  one  against  seven,  and  you  must  let 
me  make  my  points.  Then  you  can 
reply." 

He  finished  at  last,  leaving  every  Whig 
nerve  quivering,  every  Whig  face  burning 
with  suppressed  indignation,  and  every 
Whig  breast  full,  almost  to  bursting,  with 
a  speech  in  reply.  The  strongest  debater 
of  them  all  managed  to  begin  first,  but 
just  as  he  pronounced  the  opening  words, 
Mr.  E —  -  interrupted  him. 


xlii  The  Old  Regime. 

"Pardon  me,"  he  said,  "I  know  all 
your  little  arguments,  so  I  '11  go  and 
talk  with  the  girls  for  half  an  hour 
while  you  run  them  over;  when  you  get 
through  send  for  me,  and  I  '11  come  and 
SWEEP  YOU  CLEAR  OUT  OF  THE 
ARENA." 

And  with  that  the  exasperating  man 
bowed  himself  out  of  the  dining-room. 

But  with  all  its  ludicrousness,  this  uni 
versal  habit  of  "talking  politics"  had  its 
uses.  In  the  first  place,  politics  with 
these  men  was  a  matter  of  principle,  and 
not  at  all  a  question  of  shrewd  manage 
ment.  They  knew  what  they  had  and 
what  they  wanted.  Better  still  they 
knew  every  officeholder's  record,  and  held 
each  to  a  strict  account  of  his  stewardship. 

Under  the  influence  of  this  habit  in 
social  life,  every  man  was  constantly  on 
his  metal,  of  course,  and  every  young 
man  was  bound  to  fortify  himself  for 
contests  to  come  by  a  diligent  study  of 


The  Old  Regime.  xliii 

history  and  politics.  He  must  know  as  a 
necessary  preparation  for  ordinary  social 
converse  all  those  things  that  are  com 
monly  left  to  the  professional  politicians. 
As  well  might  he  go  into  society  in  igno 
rance  of  yesterday's  weather  or  last  week's 
news,  as  without  full  knowledge  of  Ben- 
ton's  Thirty  Years'  View,  and  a  familiar 
acquaintance  with  the  papers  in  the 
Federalist.  In  short,  this  odd  habit  com 
pelled  thorough  political  education,  and 
enforced  upon  every  man  old  enough  to 
vote  an  active,  earnest  participation  in 
politics.  Perhaps  a  country  in  which 
universal  suffrage  exists  would  be  the 
better  if  both  were  more  general  than 
they  are. 

But  politics  did  not  furnish  the  only 
subjects  of  debate  among  these  people. 
They  talked  politics,  it  is  true,  whenever 
they  met  at  all,  but  when  they  had  mutu 
ally  annihilated  each  other,  when  each 
had  said  all  there  was  to  say  on  the  sub- 


xliv  The  Old  Regime. 

ject,  they  frequently  turned  to  other 
themes.  Of  these,  the  ones  most  com 
monly  and  most  vigorously  discussed  were 
points  of  doctrinal  theology.  The  great 
battle-ground  was  baptism.  Half  the 
people  were,  perhaps,  Baptists,  and  when 
Baptist  and  pedo-Baptist  met  they  sniffed 
the  battle  at  once, — that  is  to  say,  as 
soon  as  they  had  finished  the  inevitable 
discussion  of  politics. 

On  this  question  of  Baptism  each  had 
been  over  the  ground  many  hundreds  of 
times,  and  each  must  have  known  when 
he  put  forth  an  argument  what  the  answer 
would  be.  But  this  made  no  manner  of 
difference.  They  were  always  ready  to 
go  over  the  matter  again.  I  amused  my 
self  once  by  preparing  a  "part"  debate  on 
the  subject.  I  arranged  the  remarks  of 
each  disputant  in  outline,  providing  each 
speech  with  its  proper  "cue,"  after  the 
manner  of  stage  copies  of  a  play,  and, 
taking  a  friend  into  my  confidence,  I 


The  Old  Regime.  xlv 

used  sometimes  to  follow  the  discussion, 
with  my  copy  of  it  in  hand,  and,  except 
in  the  case  of  a  very  poorly  informed  or 
wholly  unpractised  debater,  my  "cues" 
and  speeches  were  found  to  be  amusingly 
accurate. 

The  Virginians  were  a  very  religious  as 
well  as  a  very  polemical  people,  however, 
and  I  do  not  remember  that  1  ever  knew 
them,  even  in  the  heat  of  their  fiercest 
discussions  upon  doctrine,  to  forget  the 
brotherly  kindness  which  lay  as  a  broad 
foundation  under  their  card-houses  of 
creed.  They  believed  with  all  their  souls 
in  the  doctrines  set  down  by  their  several 
denominations,  and  maintained  them 
stoutly  on  all  occasions ;  but  they  loved 
each  other,  attended  each  other's  services, 
and  joined  hands  right  heartily  in  every 
good  work. 

There  was  one  other  peculiarity  in 
their  church  relations  worthy  of  notice. 
The  Episcopal  Church  was  once  an  estab- 


xlvi  The  Old  Regime. 

lishment  in  Virginia,  as  every  reader 
knows,  but  every  reader  does  not  know, 
perhaps,  that  even  up  to  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  it  remained  in  some  sense  an 
establishment  in  some  parts  of  the  State. 
There  were  little  old  churches  in  many 
neighborhoods  which  had  stood  for  a  cen 
tury  or  two,  and  the  ancestors  of  the 
present  generation  had  all  belonged  to 
them  in  their  time.  One  of  these  churches 
I  remember  lovingly  for  its  old  traditions, 
for  its  picturesqueness,  and  for  the 
warmth  of  the  greeting  its  congregation 
gave  me — not  as  a  congregation  but  as 
individuals  —  when  I,  a  lad  half  grown, 
returned  to  the  land  of  my  fathers. 
Every  man  and  woman  in  that  congrega 
tion  had  known  my  father  and  loved  him, 
and  nearly  every  one  was  my  cousin,  at 
least  in  the  Virginian  acceptation  of  that 
word.  The  church  was  Episcopal,  of 
course,  while  the  great  majority,  perhaps 
seven  eighths  of  the  people  who  attended 


The  Old  Rfoime.          xlvii 


it  and  supported  it  were  members  of  other 
denominations  —  Baptists,  Presbyterians, 
and  Methodists.  But  they  all  felt  them 
selves  at  home  here.  This  was  the  old 
family  church  where  their  forefathers  had 
worshiped,  and  under  the  shadow  of 
which  they  were  buried.  They  all  be 
longed  here  no  matter  what  other  church 
might  claim  them  as  members.  They 
paid  the  old  clergyman's  salary,  served  in 
the  vestry,  attended  the  services,  kept 
church,  organ,  and  churchyard  in  repair, 
and  in  all  respects  regarded  themselves, 
and  were  held  by  others,  as  members 
here  of  right  and  by  inheritance.  It  was 
church  and  family,  instead  of  Church  and 
State,  and  the  sternest  Baptist  or  Presby 
terian  among  them  would  have  thought 
himself  wronged  if  left  out  of  the  count 
of  this  little  church's  membership.  This 
was  their  heritage,  their  home,  and  the 
fact  that  they  had  also  united  themselves 
with  churches  of  other  denominations 


xlviii          The  Old  Regime. 

made  no  difference  whatever  in  their  feel 
ing  toward  the  old  mother  church,  there 
in  the  woods,  guarding  and  cherishing 
the  dust  of  their  dead. 

All  the  people,  young  and  old,  went  to 
church ;  it  was  both  pleasant  and  proper 
to  do  so,  though  not  all  of  them  went  for 
the  sake  of  the  sermon  or  the  service. 
The  churches  were  usually  built  in  the 
midst  of  a  grove  of  century  oaks,  and 
their  surroundings  were  nearly  always 
pleasantly  picturesque.  The  gentlemen 
came  on  horseback,  the  ladies  in  their 
great  lumbering,  old-fashioned  carriages, 
with  an  ebony  driver  in  front  and  a  more 
or  less  ebony  footman  or  two  behind. 
Beside  the  driver  sat  ordinarily  the  old 
"mammy"  of  the  family,  or  some  other 
equally  respectable  and  respected  African 
woman,  whose  crimson  or  scarlet  turban 
and  orange  neckerchief  gave  a  dash  of 
color  to  the  picture,  a  trifle  barbaric,  per 
haps,  in  combination,  but  none  the  less 


The  Old  Rdgime.  xlix 


pleasant  in  its  effect  for  that.  The 
men  came  first,  mounted  on  their  superb 
riding  horses,  wearing  great  buckskin 
gauntlets  and  clad  in  full  evening  dress  — 
that  being  en  rtglc  always  in  Virginia,— 
with  the  skirts  of  the  coat  drawn  forward, 
over  the  thighs,  and  pinned  in  front,  as  a 
precaution  against  possible  contact  with 
the  reeking  sides  of  the  hard-ridden 
steeds. 

The  young  men  came  first  to  church, 
as  I  have  said,  and  they  did  so  for  a  pur 
pose.  The  carriages  were  elegant  and 
costly,  many  of  them,  but  nearly  all  were 
extremely  old-fashioned  ;  perched  high  in 
air,  they  were  not  easy  of  entrance  or  exit 
by  young  women  in  full  dress  without 
assistance,  and  it  was  accounted  the  pre 
scriptive  privilege  of  the  young  men  to 
render  the  needed  service  at  the  church 
door.  When  this  preliminary  duty  was 
fully  done,  some  of  the  youths  took  seats 
inside  the  church,  but  if  the  weather  were 


1  The  Old  Regime. 

fine  many  preferred  to  stroll  through  the 
woods,  or  to  sit  in  little  groups  under  the 
trees,  awaiting  the  exit  of  the  womankind, 
who  must,  of  course,  be  chatted  with  and 
helped  into  their  carriages  again. 

Invitations  to  dinner  or  to  a  more  ex 
tended  visit  were  in  order  the  moment  the 
service  was  over.  Every  gentleman  went 
to  dine  with  a  friend,  or  took  a  number 
of  friends  to  dine  with  him.  But  the 
arrangements  depended  largely  upon  the 
young  women,  who  had  a  very  pretty 
habit  of  visiting  each  other  and  staying  a 
week  or  more,  and  these  visits  nearly  al 
ways  originated  at  church.  Each  young 
woman  invited  all  the  rest  to  go  home  with 
her,  and  after  a  deal  of  confused  consulta 
tion,  out  of  whose  chaos  only  the  femi 
nine  mind  could  possibly  have  extracted 
anything  like  a  conclusion,  two  or  three 
would  win  all  the  others  to  themselves, 
each  taking  half  a  dozen  or  more  with 
her,  and  promising  to  send  early  the  next 


The  Old  Rdgime.  li 

morning  for  their  trunks.  With  so  many 
of  the  fairest  damsels  secured  for  a  visit  of 
a  week  or  a  fortnight,  the  young  hostess 
was  sure  of  cavaliers  in  plenty  to  do  her 
guests  honor.  And  upon  my  word  it  was 
all  very  pleasant !  I  have  idled  away 
many  a  week  in  these  old  country  houses, 
and  for  my  life  I  cannot  manage  to  regret 
the  fact,  or  to  remember  it  with  a  single 
pang  of  remorse  for  the  wasted  hours. 
Perhaps  after  all  they  were  not  wholly 
wasted.  Who  shall  say?  Other  things 
than  gold  are  golden. 

As  a  guest  in  those  houses  one  was  not 
welcome  only,  but  free.  There  was  a 
servant  to  take  your  horse,  a  servant  to 
brush  your  clothes,  a  servant  to  attend 
you  whenever  you  had  a  want  to  supply 
or  a  wish  to  gratify.  But  you  were  never 
oppressed  with  attentions,  or  under  any 
kind  of  restraint.  If  you  liked  to  sit  in 
the  parlor,  the  women  there  would  enter 
tain  you  very  agreeably,  or  set  you  to 


Hi  The  Old  Regime. 

entertaining  them  by  reading  aloud,  or 
by  anything  else  which  might  suggest 
itself.  If  you  preferred  the  piazza,  there 
were  sure  to  be  others  like-minded  with 
yourself.  If  you  smoked,  there  were  al 
ways  pipes  and  tobacco  on  the  sideboard, 
and  a  man-servant  to  bring  them  to  you 
if  you  were  not  inclined  to  go  after  them. 
In  short,  each  guest  might  do  precisely 
as  he  pleased,  sure  that  in  doing  so  he 
should  best  please  his  host  and  hostess. 

My  own  favorite  amusement — I  am  the 
father  of  a  family  now,  and  may  freely 
confess  the  fancies  and  foibles  of  a  de 
parted  youth — was  to  accompany  the 
young  mistress  of  the  mansion  on  her 
rounds  of  domestic  duty,  carrying  her 
key- basket  for  her,  and  assisting  her  in 
various  ways,  unlocking  doors  and — really 
I  cannot  remember  that  I  was  of  any  very 
great  use  to  her  after  all ;  but  willingness 
counts  for  a  good  deal  in  this  world,  and 
I  was  always  very  willing  at  any  rate. 


The  Old  Rdgime.  liii 

As  a  rule,  the  young  daughter  of  the 
mansion  was  housekeeper,  and  this  may 
perhaps  account  for  the  fact  that  the 
habit  of  carrying  housekeeper's  key- 
baskets  for  them  was  very  general  among 
the  young  gentlemen  in  houses  where 
they  were  upon  terms  of  intimate  friend 
ship. 

Life  in  Virginia  was  the  pursuit  of  hap 
piness  and  its  attainment.  Money  was  a 
means  only,  and  was  usually  spent  very 
lavishly  whenever  its  expenditure  could 
add  in  any  way  to  comfort,  but  as  there 
was  never  any  occasion  to  spend  it  for 
mere  display,  most  of  the  planters  were 
abundantly  able  to  use  it  freely  for  better 
purposes.  That  is  to  say,  most  of  them 
were  able  to  owe  their  debts  and  to  renew 
their  notes  when  necessary.  Their  houses 
were  built  for  comfort,  and  most  of  them 
had  grown  gray  with  age  long  before  the 
present  generation  was  born.  A  great 
passage-way  ran  through  the  middle,  com- 


liv  The  Old  Regime. 

monly,  and  here  stood  furniture  which 
would  have  delighted  the  heart  of  the 
medievalist :  great,  heavy  oaken  chairs, 
black  with  age  and  polished  with  long 
usage — chairs  whose  joints  were  naked 
and  not  ashamed ;  sofas  of  ponderous 
build,  made  by  carpenters  who  were 
skeptical  as  to  the  strength  of  woods,  and 
thought  it  necessary  to  employ  solid 
pieces  of  oak,  four  inches  in  diameter, 
for  legs,  and  to  shoe  each  with  a  solid 
brass  lion's  paw  as  a  precaution  against 
abrasion.  A  great  porch  in  front  was 
shut  out  at  night  by  the  ponderous 
double  doors  of  the  hallway,  but  during 
the  day  the  way  was  wide  open  through 
the  house. 

The  floors  were  of  white  ash,  and  in 
summer  no  carpets  or  rugs  were  any 
where  to  be  seen.  Every  morning  the 
floors  were  polished  by  diligent  scouring 
with  dry  pine  needles,  and  the  furniture 
similarly  brightened  by  rubbing  with  wax 


The  Old  Rtgime.  Iv 

and  cork.  In  the  parlors  the  furniture 
was  usually  very  rich  as  to  woods  and 
very  antique  in  workmanship.  The  cur 
tains  were  of  crimson  damask  with  lace 
underneath,  and  the  contrast  between 
these  and  the  bare,  white,  polished  floor 
was  singularly  pleasing. 

The  first  white  person  astir  in  the  house 
every  morning  was  the  woman  who  car 
ried  the  keys,  mother  or  daughter,  as  the 
case  might  be.  Her  morning  work  was 
no  light  affair,  and  its  accomplishment 
consumed  several  hours  daily.  To  begin 
with  she  must  knead  the  light  bread  with 
her  own  hands  and  send  it  to  the  kitchen 
to  be  baked  and  served  hot  at  breakfast. 
She  must  prepare  a  skillet  full  of  light 
rolls  for  the  same  meal,  and  "give  out" 
the  materials  for  the  rest  of  the  break 
fast.  Then  she  must  see  to  the  sweeping 
and  garnishing  of  the  lower  rooms,  pas 
sages,  and  porches,  lest  the  maids  engaged 
in  that  task  should  entertain  less  extreme 


Ivi  The  Old  Regime. 

views  than  her  own  on  the  subject  of  that 
purity  and  cleanliness  which  constituted 
the  house's  charm  and  the  housekeeper's 
crown  of  honor.  She  must  write  two  or 
three  notes,  to  be  dispatched  by  the 
hands  of  a  small  negro  to  her  acquaint 
ances  in  the  neighborhood, — a  kind  of 
correspondence  much  affected  in  that  so 
ciety.  In  the  midst  of  all  these  duties, 
the  young  housekeeper — for  somehow  it 
is  only  the  youthful  ones  whom  I  remem 
ber  vividly — must  meet  and  talk  with 
such  of  the  guests  as  might  happen  to  be 
early  risers,  and  must  not  forget  to  send 
a  messenger  to  the  kitchen  once  every  ten 
minutes  to  "hurry  up  breakfast!"  not 
that  breakfast  could  be  hurried  under  any 
conceivable  circumstances,  but  merely 
because  it  was  the  custom  to  send  such 
messages,  and  the  young  woman  was  a 
duty-loving  maid  who  did  her  part  in  the 
world  without  inquiring  why.  She  knew 
very  well  that  breakfast  would  be  ready 


The  Old  Regime.  Ivii 

at  the  traditional  hour,  the  hour  at  which 
it  always  had  been  served  in  that  house, 
and  that  there  was  no  power  on  the  plan 
tation  great  enough  to  hasten  it  by  a 
single  minute.  But  she  sent  out  to 
"hurry"  it  nevertheless. 

When  breakfast  is  ready  the  guests  are 
ready  for  it.  It  is  a  merit  of  fixed  habits 
that  one  can  conform  to  them  easily,  and 
when  one  knows  that  breakfast  has  been 
ready  in  the  house  in  which  he  is  staying 
precisely  at  nine  o'clock  every  morning 
for  one  or  two  centuries  past,  and  that 
the  immovable  conservatism  of  an  old 
Virginian  cook  stands  guard  over  the  sanc 
tity  of  that  custom,  he  has  no  difficulty  in 
determining  when  to  begin  dressing. 

The  breakfast  is  sure  to  be  a  good  one, 
consisting  of  everything  obtainable  at  the 
season.  If  it  be  in  summer,  the  host  will 
have  a  dish  of  broiled  roe  herrings  before 
him,  a  plate  of  hot  rolls  at  his  right  hand, 
and  a  cylindrical  loaf  of  hot  white  bread 


Iviii  The  Old  Regime. 

— which  it  is  his  duty  to  cut  and  serve — 
on  his  left.  On  the  flanks  will  be  one  or 
two  plates  of  beaten  biscuit  and  a  loaf  of 
batter  bread,  i.  c.,  corn-bread  made  rich 
with  milk  and  eggs.  A  dish  of  plain  corn 
"  pones"  sits  on  the  dresser,  and  the  serv 
ants  bring  griddle-cakes  or  waffles  hot 
from  the  kitchen ;  so  much  for  breads. 
A  knuckle  of  cold,  boiled  ham  is  always 
present,  on  either  the  table  or  the  dresser, 
as  convenience  may  dictate.  A  dish  of 
sliced  tomatoes  and  another  of  broiled 
ditto  are  the  invariable  vegetables,  supple 
mented  on  occasion  with  lettuce,  radishes, 
and  other  like  things.  These  are  the 
staples  of  breakfast,  and  additions  are 
made  as  the  season  serves. 

Breakfast  over,  the  young  housekeeper 
scalds  and  dries  the  dishes  and  glassware 
with  her  own  hands.  Then  she  goes  to 
the  garden,  smoke-house,  and  store-room, 
to  "give  out"  for  dinner.  Morning  rides, 
backgammon,  music,  reading,  etc.,  fur- 


The  Old  Regime.  lix 

nish  amusement  until  one  o'clock,  or  a 
little  later.  The  gentlemen  go  shooting 
or  fishing,  if  they  choose,  or  join  the  host 
in  his  rides  over  the  plantation,  inspecting 
his  corn,  tobacco,  wheat,  and  live  stock. 
About  one  the  house  grows  quiet.  The 
women  retire  to  their  chambers,  the  gen 
tlemen  make  themselves  comfortable  in 
various  ways.  About  two  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  master  of  the  mansion  to  offer 
toddy  or  juleps  to  his  guests,  and  to  ask 
one  of  the  dining-room  servants  if  "din 
ner  is  'most  ready."  Half  an  hour  later 
he  must  send  the  cook  word  to  "hurry  it 
up."  It  is  to  be  served  at  four,  of  course, 
but  as  the  representative  of  an  ancient 
house,  it  is  his  bounden  duty  to  ask  the 
two-o'clock  question  and  send  the  half- 
past-two  message. 

Supper  is  served  at  eight,  and  the 
women  usually  retire  for  the  night  at  ten 
or  eleven. 

If  hospitality  was  deemed  the  chief  of 


Ix  The  Old  Regime. 

virtues  among  the  Virginians,  the  duty 
of  accepting  hospitality  was  quite  as 
strongly  insisted  upon.  One  must  visit 
his  friends,  whatever  the  circumstances, 
if  he  would  not  be  thought  churlish.  Es 
pecially  were  young  men  required  to  show 
a  proper  respect  and  affection  for  elderly 
female  relatives  by  dining  with  them  as 
frequently  as  at  any  other  house.  I  shall 
not  soon  forget  some  experiences  of  my 
own  in  this  regard.  The  most  stately  and 
elegant  country-house  I  have  ever  seen 
stood  in  our  neighborhood.  Its  master 
had  lived  in  great  state  there,  and  after 
his  death  his  two  maiden  sisters,  left 
alone  in  the  great  mansion,  scrupulously 
maintained  every  custom  he  had  estab 
lished  or  inherited.  They  were  my 
cousins  in  the  Virginian  sense  of  the 
word,  and  I  had  not  been  long  a  resident 
of  the  State  when  my  guardian  reminded 
me  of  my  duty  toward  them.  I  must 
ride  over  and  dine  there  without  a  special 


The  Old  Regime.  Ixi 

invitation,  and  I  must  do  this  six  or  eight 
times  a  year  at  the  least.  As  a  mere  boy, 
half-grown,  I  made  ready  for  my  visit 
with  a  good  deal  of  awe  and  trepidation. 
I  had  already  met  the  two  stately  dames 
and  was  disposed  to  distrust  my  manners 
in  their  presence.  I  went,  however,  and 
was  received  with  warm,  though  rather 
stiff  and  formal,  cordiality.  My  horse 
was  taken  to  the  stable.  I  was  shown  to 
my  room  by  a  thoroughly  drilled  servant, 
whose  tongue  had  been  trained  to  as  per 
sistent  a  silence  as  if  his  functions  had 
been  those  of  a  mute  at  a  funeral.  His 
name  I  discovered  was  Henry,  but  be 
yond  this  I  could  make  no  progress  in  his 
acquaintance.  He  prided  himself  upon 
knowing  his  place,  and  the  profound  re 
spect  with  which  he  treated  me  made  it 
impossible  that  I  should  ask  him  for  the 
information  on  which  my  happiness,  per 
haps  my  reputation,  just  then  depended. 
I  wanted  to  know  for  what  purpose  I  had 


Ixii  The  Old  Regime. 

been  shown  to  my  room,  what  I  was  ex 
pected  to  do  there,  and  at  what  hour  I 
ought  to  descend  to  the  parlor  or  library. 
It  was  manifestly  out  of  the  question 
to  seek  such  information  at  the  hands  of 
so  well-regulated  a  being  as  Henry.  He 
had  ushered  me  into  my  room  and  now 
stood  bolt  upright,  gazing  fixedly  at 
nothing  and  waiting  for  my  orders  in  pro 
found  and  immovable  silence.  He  had 
done  his  part  well,  and  it  was  not  for  him 
to  assume  that  I  was  unprepared  to  do 
mine.  His  attitude  indicated,  or  perhaps 
I  should  say  aggressively  asserted,  the 
necessity  he  was  under  of  assuming  my 
entire  familiarity  with  the  usages  of  good 
society  and  the  ancient  customs  of  this 
ancient  house.  The  worst  of  it  was  I 
fancied  that  the  solemn  rogue  guessed  my 
ignorance  and  delighted  in  exposing  my 
fraudulent  pretensions  to  good  breeding. 
But  in  this  I  did  him  an  injustice,  as 
future  knowledge  of  him  taught  me.  He 


The  Old  Rtgime.  Ixiii 

was  well  drilled,  and  delighted  in  doing 
his  duty,  that  was  all.  No  gaucJieric  on 
my  part  would  have  moved  him  to  smile. 
He  knew  his  place  and  his  business  too 
well  for  that.  Whatever  I  might  have 
done  he  would  have  held  to  be  perfectly 
proper.  It  was  for  him  to  stand  there 
like  a  statue,  until  I  should  bid  him  do 
otherwise,  and  if  I  had  kept  him  there  for 
a  week  I  think  he  would  have  given  no 
sign  of  weariness  or  impatience.  As  it 
was,  his  presence  appalled  and  oppressed 
me,  and  in  despair  of  discovering  the 
proper  thing  to  do,  I  determined  to  put 
a  bold  face  upon  the  matter. 

"I  am  tired  and  warm,"  I  said,  "and 
will  rest  awhile  upon  the  bed.  I  will  join 
the  ladies  in  half  an  hour.  You  may  go 
now." 

At  dinner,  Henry  stood  at  the  side 
board  and  silently  directed  the  servants. 
When  the  cloth  was  removed,  he  brought 
a  wine  tub  with  perhaps  a  dozen  bottles 


Ixiv  The  Old  Rdgime. 

of  antique  Madeira  in  it  and  silently 
awaited  my  signal  before  decanting  one 
of  them.  When  I  had  drunk  a  glass  with 
the  ladies,  they  rose  and  retired  according 
to  the  custom,  leaving  me  alone  with  the 
wine  and  the  cigars, — and  Henry,  whose 
erect  solemnity  converted  the  great  silent 
dining-room  into  something  very  like  a 
funeral  chamber.  He  stood  there  like  a 
guardsman  on  duty,  immovable,  speech 
less,  patient,  while  I  sat  at  the  board,  a 
decanter  of  wine  before  me  and  the  tub 
of  unopened  bottles  on  the  floor  by  my 
side — enough  for  a  regiment. 

I  did  not  want  any  wine  or  anything 
else  except  a  sound  of  some  sort  to  break 
the  horrible  stillness.  I  tried  to  think  of 
some  device  by  which  to  make  Henry  go 
out  of  the  room  or  move  one  of  his  hands 
or  turn  his  eyes  a  little  or  even  wink;  but 
I  failed  utterly.  There  was  nothing 
whatever  to  be  done.  There  was  no  order 
to  give  him.  Every  want  was  supplied 


The  Old  Rtgime.  Ixv 

and  everything  was  at  my  hand.  The 
cigars  were  under  my  nose,  the  ash  pan 
by  them,  and  a  lighted  wax  candle  stood 
within  reach.  I  toyed  with  the  decanter 
in  the  hope  of  breaking  the  stillness,  but 
its  stand  was  too  well  cushioned  above 
and  below  to  make  a  sound.  I  ventured 
at  last  to  move  one  of  my  feet,  but  a 
strip  of  velvet  carpet  lay  between  it  and 
the  floor. 

I  could  stand  it  no  longer.  Filling  a 
glass  of  wine  I  drank  it  off,  lighted  a  fresh 
cigar,  and  boldly  strode  out  of  the  house 
to  walk  on  the  lawn  in  front. 

On  the  occasion  of  subsequent  visits  I 
got  on  well  enough,  knowing  precisely 
what  to  expect  and  what  to  do,  and  in 
time  I  came  to  regard  this  as  one  of  the 
very  pleasantest  houses  in  which  I  visited 
at  all,  if  on  no  other  account  than  because 
I  found  myself  perfectly  free  there  to  do 
as  I  pleased;  but  until  I  learned  that  I 
was  expected  to  consult  only  my  own 


Ixvi  The  Old  Regime. 

comfort  while  a  guest  in  the  house  the 
atmosphere  of  the  place  oppressed  me. 

Not  in  every  house  were  the  servants 
so  well  trained  as  Henry,  but  what  they 
lacked  in  skill  they  fully  made  up  in  num 
bers,  and  in  hardly  anything  else  was  the 
extravagance  of  the  Virginians  so  mani 
fest  as  in  their  wastefulness  of  labor.  On 
nearly  every  plantation  there  were  ten  or 
twelve  able-bodied  men  and  women  em 
ployed  about  the  house,  doing  the  work 
which  two  or  three  ought  to  have  done, 
and  might  have  done;  and  in  addition  to 
this  there  were  usually  a  dozen  or  a  score 
of  others  with  merely  nominal  duties  or 
no  duties  at  all.  But  it  was  useless  to 
urge  their  master  to  send  any  of  them  to 
the  field,  and  idle  to  show  him  that  the 
addition  which  might  thus  be  made  to  the 
force  of  productive  laborers  would  so  in 
crease  his  revenue  as  to  acquit  him  of  debt 
within  a  few  years.  He  did  not  much 
care  to  be  free  of  debt  for  one  thing,  and 


The  Old  Regime.          Ixvii 

he  liked  to  have  plenty  of  servants  always 
within  call.  As  his  dinner  table  bore 
every  day  food  enough  for  a  battalion, 
so  his  nature  demanded  the  presence  of 
half  a  dozen  servitors  whenever  one  was 
wanted.  Indeed,  these  people  usually 
summoned  servants  in  squads,  calling 
three  or  four  to  take  one  guest's  horse  to 
the  stable  or  to  bring  one  pitcher  of  ice- 
water. 

And  yet  I  should  do  the  Virginians 
great  injustice  were  I  to  leave  the  impres 
sion  that  they  were  lazy.  With  abundant 
possessions,  superabundant  household 
help  and  slave  labor,  they  had  a  good 
deal  of  leisure,  but  they  were  nevertheless 
very  industrious  people  in  their  way.  It 
was  no  light  undertaking  to  manage  a 
great  plantation  and  at  the  same  time 
fulfil  the  large  measure  of  duties  to 
friends  and  neighbors  which  custom  im 
posed.  One  must  visit  and  receive  visi 
tors,  and  must  go  to  court  every  month, 


Ixviii          The  Old  Regime. 

and  to  all  planters'  meetings.  Besides 
this  there  was  a  certain  amount  of  fox 
hunting  and  squirrel  and  bird  and  turkey 
shooting  and  fishing  to  be  done,  from 
which  it  was  really  very  difficult  to  escape 
with  any  credit  to  oneself.  On  the  whole, 
the  time  of  the  planters  was  pretty  fully 
occupied.  The  women  had  household 
duties,  and  these  included  the  cutting 
and  making  of  clothes  for  all  the  negroes 
on  the  plantation,  a  heavy  task  which 
might  as  well  have  been  done  by  the 
negro  seamstresses,  except  that  such  was 
not  the  custom.  Fair  women  who  kept 
dressmakers  for  themselves  worked  day 
after  day  on  coarse  cloths,  manufacturing 
coats  and  trousers  for  the  field  hands. 
They  did  a  great  deal  of  embroidery  and 
worsted  work  too,  and  personally  in 
structed  negro  girls  in  the  use  of  the 
needle  and  scissors.  All  this,  with  their 
necessary  visiting  and  entertaining,  and 
their  daily  attendance  upon  the  sick 


The  Old  Regime.  Ixix 

negroes,  whom  they  always  visited  and 
cared  for  in  person,  served  to  make  the 
Virginian  women  about  the  busiest  wo 
men  I  have  ever  known.  Even  Sunday 
brought  them  little  rest,  for,  in  addition 
to  other  duties  on  that  day,  each  of  them 
spent  some  hours  at  the  "quarters"  hold 
ing  a  Sunday-school. 

Nevertheless  the  Virginians  had  a  good 
deal  of  leisure  on  their  hands,  and  their 
command  of  time  was  a  very  important 
agent,  I  should  say,  in  the  formation  of 
their  characters  as  individuals,  and  as  a 
people.  It  bred  habits  of  outdoor  exer 
cise,  which  gave  the  young  men  stalwart 
frames  and  robust  constitutions.  It  gave 
form  to  their  social  life.  Above  all,  it 
made  reading  men  and  students  of  many, 
though  their  reading  and  their  study  were 
of  a  somewhat  peculiar  kind.  They  were 
all  Latinists,  inasmuch  as  Latin  formed 
the  staple  of  their  ordinary  school  course. 
It  was  begun  early  and  continued  to  the 


Ixx  The  Old  Regime. 

end,  and  even  in  after  life  very  many 
planters  were  in  the  habit  of  reading  their 
Virgil  and  their  Horace  and  their  Ovid  as 
an  amusement,  so  that  it  came  to  be  as 
sumed,  quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
every  gentleman  with  any  pretension  to 
culture  could  read  Latin  easily,  and  quote 
Horace  and  Juvenal  from  memory. 

But  they  read  English  literature  still 
more  largely,  and  in  no  part  of  the  coun 
try,  except  in  distinctly  literary  centres 
like  Cambridge  or  Concord,  are  really  rich 
household  libraries  so  common  a  posses 
sion,  I  think,  as  they  were  among  the 
best  classes  of  Virginian  planters.  Let 
us  open  the  old  glass  doors  and  see  what 
books  the  Virginians  read.  The  libraries 
in  the  old  houses  were  the  growth  of 
many  generations,  begun  perhaps  by  the 
English  cadet  who  founded  the  family  on 
this  side  of  the  water  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  added  to  little 
by  little  from  that  day  to  this.  They 


The  Old  Regime.  Ixxi 

were  especially  rich  in  the  English  classics, 
in  early  editions  with  long  s's  and  looped 
ct's,  but  sadly  deficient  in  the  literature 
of  the  present.  In  one  of  them,  I  re 
member,  I  found  nearly  everything  from 
Chaucer  to  Byron,  and  comparatively 
little  that  was  later.  From  Pope  to 
Southey  it  furnished  a  pretty  complete 
geologic  section  of  English  literature,  and 
from  internal  evidence  I  conclude  that 
when  the  founder  of  the  family  and  the 
library  first  took  up  his  residence  in  the 
Old  Dominion,  Swift  was  still  a  con 
tributor  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine, 
and  Pope  was  a  poet  not  many  years 
dead. 

There  was  a  copy  of  "Tom  Jones,"  and 
another  of  "  Joseph  Andrews,"  printed 
in  Fielding's  own  time.  The  "Specta 
tor"  was  there,  not  in  the  shape  of  a 
reprint,  but  the  original  papers,  rudely 
bound,  a  treasure  brought  from  England, 
doubtless,  by  the  immigrant.  Richardson, 


Ixxii  The  Old  Regime. 

Smollett,  Swift,  and  the  rest  were  present 
in  contemporary  editions;  the  poets  and 
essayists,  pretty  much  all  of  them,  in 
quaint  old  volumes;  Johnson's  "Lives  of 
the  Poets;"  Sheridan's  plays,  stitched; 
Burke's  works;  Scott's  novels  in  force, 
just  as  they  came,  one  after  another, 
from  the  press  of  the  Edinburgh  publish 
ers;  Miss  Edgeworth's  moralities  elbow 
ing  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn's  strongly  tainted 
romances  ;  Miss  Burney's  "Evelina," 
which  was  so  "proper"  that  all  the  young 
ladies  used  to  read  it,  but  so  dull  that 
nobody  ever  opens  it  nowadays;  and 
scores  of  other  old  "new  books,"  which 
I  have  no  room  to  catalogue  here,  even 
if  I  could  remember  them  all. 

Byron  appeared,  not  as  a  whole,  but  in 
separate  volumes,  bought  as  each  was 
published.  Even  the  poor  little  "Hours 
of  Idleness"  was  there,  ordered  from 
across  the  sea,  doubtless,  in  consequence 
of  the  savage  treatment  it  received  at  the 


The  Old  Rdgime.         Ixxiii 

hands  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  bound 
volumes  of  which  were  on  the  shelves 
below.  There  was  no  copy  of  "English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,"  but  as 
nearly  all  the  rest  of  Byron's  poems  were 
there  in  original  editions,  it  seems  prob 
able  that  the  satire  also  had  once  held  a 
place  in  the  library.  It  had  been  read  to 
pieces,  perhaps,  or  borrowed  and  never 
returned. 

There  were  histories  of  all  kinds,  and 
collected  editions  of  standard  works  in 
plenty,  covering  a  wide  field  of  law,  poli 
tics,  theology,1  and  what  not. 

Of  strictly  modern  books  the  assort 
ment  was  comparatively  meagre.  Mac- 
aulay's  "Miscellanies,"  Motley's  "Dutch 
Republic,"  Prescott's" Mexico,"  "Peru," 
etc. ;"  stray  volumes  of  Dickens,  Thack 
eray,  Bulwer,  and  Lever  ;  Kennedy's 
"  Swallow  Barn,"  Cooke's  "  Virginia 
Comedians,"  half  a  dozen  volumes  of 
Irving,  and  a  few  others  made  up  the  list. 


Ixxiv          The  Old  Regime. 

Of  modern  poetry  there  was  not  a  line, 
and  in  this,  as  in  other  respects,  the  old 
library  —  burned  during  the  war  —  fairly 
represented  the  literary  tastes  and  reading 
habits  of  the  Virginians  in  general.  They 
read  little  or  no  recent  poetry  and  not 
much  recent  prose.  I  think  this  was  not 
so  much  the  result  of  prejudice  as  of 
education.  The  schools  in  Virginia  were 
excellent  ones  of  their  kind,  but  their 
system  was  that  of  a  century  ago.  They 
gave  attention  chiefly  to  "the  human 
ities"  and  logic,  and  the  education  of  a 
Virginian  gentleman  resembled  that  of  an 
Englishman  of  the  last  century  far  more 
closely  than  that  of  any  modern  American. 
The  writers  of  the  present  naturally  ad 
dress  themselves  to  men  of  to-day,  and 
this  is  precisely  what  the  Virginians  were 
not,  wherefore  modern  literature  was  not 
at  all  a  thing  to  their  taste. 

To  all  this  there  were  of  course  excep 
tions.  I  have  known  some  Virginians 


The  Old  Regime.  Ixxv 

who  appreciated  Tennyson,  enjoyed 
Longfellow  and  Lowell,  and  understood 
Browning;  just  as  I  have  known  a  few 
who  affected  a  modern  pronunciation  of 
the  letter  "a"  in  such  words  as  "mas 
ter,"  "basket,"  "glass,"  and  "grass." 


A  REBEL'S  RECOLLECTIONS 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE    MUSTERING. 

THAT  was  an  admirable  idea  of  De  Quin- 
cey's,  formally  to  postulate  any  startling 
theory  upon  which  he  desired  to  build  an 
argument  or  a  story,  and  to  insist  that 
his  readers  should  regard  the  postulate  as 
proved,  on  pain  of  losing  altogether  what 
he  had  to  say.  The  plan  is  a  very  con 
venient  one,  saving  a  deal  of  argument,  and 
establishing  in  the  outset  a  very  desirable 
relation  of  mastery  and  subordination  be 
tween  writer  and  reader.  Indeed,  but  for 
some  such  device  I  should  never  be  able 
to  get  on  at  all  with  these  sketches,  fully 
to  understand  which,  the  reader  must  make 
of  himself,  for  the  time  at  least,  a  Confeder- 


2  A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

ate.  He  must  put  himself  in  the  place  oi 
the  Southerners  and  look  at  some  things 
through  their  eyes,  if  he  would  understand 
those  things  and  their  results  at  all ;  and 
as  it  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  write  a 
defense  of  the  Southern  view  of  any  ques 
tion,  it  will  save  a  good  deal  of  explanation 
on  my  part,  and  weariness  on  the  part  of 
the  reader,  if  I  follow  De  Quincey's  exam 
ple  and  do  a  little  postulating  to  begin  with. 
I  shall  make  no  attempt  whatever  to  prove 
my  postulates,  but  any  one  interested  in 
these  pages  will  find  it  to  his  advantage  to 
accept  them,  one  and  all,  as  proved,  pend 
ing  the  reading  of  what  is  to  follow.  After 
that  he  may  relapse  as  speedily  as  he  pleases 
into  his  own  opinions.  Here  are  the  postu 
lates  :  — 

i.  The  Southerners  honestly  believed  in 
the  right  of  secession,  not  merely  as  a  rev 
olutionary,  but  as  a  constitutional  right. 
They  not  only  held  that  whenever  any  peo 
ple  finds  the  government  under  which  it  is 


The  Mustering.  3 

living  oppressive  and  subversive  of  the  ends 
for  which  it  was  instituted,  it  is  both  the 
right  and  the  duty  of  that  people  to  throvl 
off  the  government  and  establish  a  new  one 
in  its  stead  ;  but  they  believed  also  that 
every  State  in  the  Union  held  the  reserved 
right,  under  the  constitution,  to  withdraw 
peaceably  from  the  Union  at  pleasure. 

2.  They  believed  that  every  man's  alle 
giance  was  due  to  his  State  only,  and  that 
it  was  only  by  virtue  of  the  State's  con 
tinuance  in  the  Union  that  any  allegiance 
was  due  to  the  general  government  at  all ; 
wherefore  the  withdrawal  of  a  State  from 
the  Union  would  of  itself  absolve  all  the 
citizens  of  that  State  from  whatever  obliga 
tions  they  were  under  to  maintain  and  re 
spect  the  Federal  constitution.  In  other 
words,  patriotism,  as  the  South  understood 
it,  meant  devotion  to  one's  State,  and  only 
a  secondary  and  consequential  devotion  to 
the  Union,  existing  as  a  result  of  the  State's 
action  in  making  itself  a  part  of  the  Union, 


4  A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

and  terminable  at  any  time  by  the  State's 
withdrawal. 

3.  They  were  as  truly  and  purely  patri 
otic  in  their  secession  and  in  the  righting 
which  followed,  as  were  the  people  of  the 
North  in  their  adherence  to  the  Union  it 
self.     The  difference  was  one  of  opinion  as 
to  what  the  duties  of  a  patriot  were,  and 
not  at  all  a  difference  in  the  degree  of  pa 
triotism  existing  in  the  two  sections. 

4.  You,    reader,   who    shouldered    your 
musket  and  fought  like  the  hero  you  are, 
for  the  Union  and  the  old  flag,  if  you  had 
been  bred  at  the  South,  and  had    under 
stood   your  duty    as   the    Southerners    did 
theirs,  would  have  fought  quite  as  bravely 
for  secession  as  you  did  against  it  ;  and  you 
would  have  been  quite  as  truly  a  hero  in 
the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  because  in 
either  you  would  have  risked  your  life  for 
the  sake  of  that  which  you  held  to  be  the 
right.     If  the  reader  will  bear  all  this  in 
mind  we  shall  get  on  much  better  than  we 


The  Mustering.-  5 

otherwise  could,  in  our  effort  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  war  from  a  Southern  point 
of  view. 

With  all  its  horrors  and  in  spite  of  the 
wretchedness  it  has  wrought,  this  war  of 
ours,  in  some  of  its  aspects  at  least,  begins 
to  look  like  a  very  ridiculous  affair,  now  that 
we  are  getting  too  far  away  from  it  to  hear 
the  rattle  of  the  musketry  ;  and  I  have  a 
mind,  in  this  chapter,  to  review  one  of  its 
most  ridiculous  phases,  to  wit,  its  beginning. 
We  all  remember  Mr.  Webster's  pithy  put 
ting  of  the  case  with  regard  to  our  fore 
fathers  of  a  hundred  years  ago :  "  They 
went  to  war  against  a  preamble.  They 
fought  seven  years  against  a  declaration. 
They  poured  out  their  treasures  and  their 
blood  like  water,  in  a  contest  in  opposition 
to  an  assertion."  Now  it  seems  to  me  that 
something  very  much  like  this  might  be 
said  of  the  Southerners,  and  particularly  of 
the  Virginians,  without  whose  pluck  and 
pith  there  could  have  been  no  war  at  aU 


6  A  -  Rebel's  Recollections. 

worth  writing  or  talking  about.  They  made 
war  upon  a  catch-word,  and  fought  until 
they  were  hopelessly  ruined  for  the  sake  of 
an  abstraction.  And  certainly  history  will 
not  find  it  to  the  discredit  of  those  people 
that  they  freely  offered  themselves  upon  the 
altar  of  an  abstract  principle  of  right,  in  a 
war  which  they  knew  must  work  hopeless 
ruin  to  themselves,  whatever  its  other  re 
sults  might  be.  Virginia  did  not  want  to 
secede,  and  her  decision  to  this  effect  was 
given  in  the  election  of  a  convention  com 
posed  foi  the  most  part  of  men  strongly 
opposed  to  secession.  The  Virginians  be 
lieved  they  had  both  a  moral  and  a  consti 
tutional  right  to  withdraw  voluntarily  from 
a  Union  into  which  they  had  voluntarily 
gone,  but  the  majority  of  them  preferred  to 
remain  as  they  were.  They  did  not  feel 
themselves  particularly  aggrieved  or  threat 
ened  by  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  so, 
while  they  never  doubted  that  they  had  an 
unquestionable  right  to  secede  at  will,  they 


The  Mustering.  7 

decided  by  their  votes  not  to  do  anything 
of  the  kind.  This  decision  was  given  in  the 
most  unmistakable  way,  by  heavy  majori 
ties,  in  an  election  which  involved  no  other 
issue  whatever.  But  without  Virginia  the 
States  which  had  already  passed  ordinances 
of  secession  would  have  been  wholly  unable 
to  sustain  themselves.  Virginia's  strength 
in  men,  material,  and  geographical  position 
was  very  necessary,  for  one  thing,  and  her 
moral  influence  on  North  Carolina,  Arkan 
sas,  and  other  hesitating  States,  was  even 
more  essential  to  the  success  of  the  move 
ment.  Accordingly  every  possible  effort 
was  made  to  "  fire  the  heart "  of  the  con 
servative  old  commonwealth.  Delegations, 
with  ponderous  stump  speeches  in  their 
mouths  and  parchment  appeals  in  their 
hands,  were  sent  from  the  seceding  States 
to  Richmond,  while  every  Virginian  who 
actively  favored  secession  was  constituted 
a  committee  of  one  to  cultivate  a  public 
sentiment  in  favor  of  the  movement, 


8  A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

Then  came  such  a  deluge  of  stump 
speeches  as  would  have  been  impossible  in 
any  other  state  or  country  in  the  civilized 
world,  for  there  never  yet  was  a  Virginian 
who  could  not,  on  occasion,  acquit  himself 
very  well  on  the  hustings.  The  process  of 
getting  up  the  requisite  amount  of  enthusi 
asm,  in  the  country  districts  especially,  was 
in  many  cases  a  very  laughable  one.  In  one 
county,  I  remember,  the  principal  speakers 
were  three  lawyers  of  no  very  great  weight 
except  in  a  time  of  excitement.  One  of 
them  was  colonel  of  the  county  militia, 
another  lieutenant-colonel,  and  the  third 
captain  of  a  troop  of  volunteer  cavalry,  a 
fine  body  of  men,  who  spent  three  or  four 
days  of  each  month  partly  in  practicing  a 
system  of  drill  which,  I  am  persuaded,  is 
as  yet  wholly  undreamed  of  by  any  of  the 
writers  upon  tactics,  and  partly  in  cultivat 
ing  the  social  virtues  over  that  peculiar  spe 
cies  of  feast  known  as  a  barbecue.  When 
it  became  evident  that  the  people  of  Vir 


The  Mustering  9 

ginia  were  not  duly  impressed  with  the 
wrong  done  them  in  the  election  of  Mr. 
Lincoln,  these  were  unquestionably  the 
right  men  in  the  right  places.  They  were 
especially  fond  of  fervid  speech-making,  and 
not  one  of  them  had  ever  been  known  to 
neglect  an  opportunity  to  practice  it ;  each 
could  make  a  speech  on  any  subject  at  a 
moment's  warning.  They  spoke  quite  as 
well  on  a  poor  theme  as  on  a  good  one,  and 
it  was  even  claimed  for  one  of  them  that  his 
eloquence  waxed  hottest  when  he  had  no 
subject  at  all  to  talk  about.  Here,  then,  was 
their  opportunity.  The  ever-full  vials  of 
their  eloquence  waited  only  for  the  uncork 
ing.  It  was  the  rule  of  their  lives  to  make 
a  speech  wherever  and  whenever  they  could 
get  an  audience,  and  under  the  militia  law 
they  could,  at  will,  compel  the  attendance 
of  a  body  of  listeners  consisting  of  pretty 
nearly  all  the  voters  of  the  county,  plus  the 
small  boys.  When  they  were  big  with 
speech  they  had  only  to  order  a  drill.  If  a 


io         A    Rebel's  Recollections. 

new  gush  of  words  or  a  felicitous  illustra 
tion  occurred  to  them  overnight,  they  called 
a  general  muster  for  the  next  day.  Two  of 
them  were  candidates,  against  a  quiet  and 
sensible  planter,  for  the  one  seat  allowed  the 
county  in  the  convention,  and  the  only  dif 
ference  of  opinion  there  was  between  them 
was  involved  in  the  question  whether  the 
ordinance  of  secession  should  be  adopted 
before  or  after  breakfast  on  the  morning  of 
the  first  day  of  the  convention's  existence. 
One  wanted  coffee  first  and  the  other  did 
not.  On  the  day  of  election,  a  drunken  fel 
low,  without  a  thought  of  saying  a  good 
thing,  apologized  to  one  of  them  for  not 
having  voted  for  him,  saying,  "  I  promised 
you,  Sam,  —  but  I  could  n't  do  it.  You  're 
a  good  fellow,  Sam,  and  smart  at  a  speech, 
but  you  see,  Sam,  you  haverit  the  weight 
o  head"  The  people,  as  the  result  of  the 
election  showed,  entertained  a  like  view  of 
the  matter,  and  the  lawyers  were  both 
beaten  by  the  old  planter. 


The  Mustering.  \  \ 

It  was  not  until  after  the  convention  as 
sembled,  however,  that  the  eloquence  of  the 
triad  came  into  full  play.  They  then  la 
bored  unceasingly  to  find  words  with  which 
to  express  their  humiliation  in  view  of  the 
degeneracy  and  cowardice  of  the  ancient 
commonwealth. 

They  rejoiced  in  the  thought  that  sooner 
or  later  the  People  —  which  they  always 
pronounced  with  an  uncommonly  big  P  — 
would  "  hurl  those  degenerate  sons  of  illus 
trious  sires,"  meaning  thereby  the  gentle 
men  who  had  been  elected  to  the  conven 
tion,  "  from  the  seats  which  they  were  now 
polluting,"  and  a  good  deal  more  of  a  simi 
lar  sort,  the  point  of  which  was  that  these 
orators  longed  for  war  of  the  bloodiest  kind, 
and  were  happy  in  the  belief  that  it  would 
come,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  conven 
tion  was  overwhelmingly  against  secession. 

Now,  in  view  of  the  subsequent  history 
of  these  belligerent  orators,  it  would  be  a 
very  interesting  thing  to  know  just  what 


12         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

they  thought  a  war  between  the  sections 
promised.  One  of  them,  as  I  have  said, 
was  colonel  of  the  two  or  three  hundred 
militia-men  mustered  in  the  county.  An 
other  was  lieutenant-colonel,  and  the  third 
was  captain  of  a  volunteer  troop,  organized 
under  the  militia  law  for  purposes  of  amuse 
ment,  chiefly.  This  last  one  could,  of 
course,  retain  his  rank,  should  his  company 
be  mustered  into  service,  and  the  other  two 
firmly  believed  that  they  would  be  called 
into  camp  as  full-fledged  field-officers.  In 
view  of  this,  the  colonel,  in  one  of  his 
speeches,  urged  upon  his  men  the  necessity 
of  a  rigid  self-examination,  touching  the 
matter  of  personal  courage,  before  going,  in 
his  regiment,  to  the  battle-field ;  "  For," 
said  he,  "  where  G.  leads,  brave  men  must 
follow,"  a  bit  of  rhetoric  which  brought 
down  the  house  as  a  matter  of  course. 
The  others  were  equally  valiant  in  anticipa 
tion  of  war  and  equally  eager  for  its  com 
ing  ;  and  yet  when  the  war  did  come,  so 


The  Mustering.  13 

sorely  taxing  the  resources  of  the  South  as 
to  make  a  levy  en  masse  necessary,  not  one 
of  the  three  ever  managed  to  hear  the 
whistle  of  a  bullet.  The  colonel  did  indeed 
go  as  far  as  Richmond,  during  the  spring 
of  1 86 1,  but  discovering  there  that  he  was 
physically  unfit  for  service,  went  no  farther. 
The  lieutenant-colonel  ran  away  from  the 
field  while  the  battle  was  yet  afar  off,  and 
the  captain,  suffering  from  "  nervous  pros 
tration,"  sent  in  his  resignation,  which  was 
unanimously  accepted  by  his  men,  on  the 
field  during  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run. 

I  sketch  these  three  men  and  their  mili 
tary  careers  not  without  a  purpose.  They 
serve  to  correct  an  error.  They  were  types 
of  a  class  which  brought  upon  the  South  a 
deal. of  odium.  Noisy  speech-makers,  they 
were  too  often  believed  by  strangers  to  be, 
as  they  pretended,  representative  men,  and 
their  bragging,  their  intolerance,  their  con 
tempt  for  the  North,  their  arrogance,  —  all 
these  were  commonly  laid  to  the  charge  of 


14         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

the  Southern  people  as  a  whole.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  these  were  not  representa 
tive  men  at  all.  They  assumed  the  role  of 
leadership  on  the  court-house  greens,  bi  t 
were  repudiated  by  the  people  at  the  polls 
first,  and  afterwards  when  the  volunteers 
were  choosing  officers  to  command  them  in 
actual  warfare.  These  men  were  clamorous 
demagogues  and  nothing  else.  They  had 
no  influence  whatever  upon  the  real  peo 
ple.  Their  vaporings  were  applauded  and 
laughed  at.  The  applause  was  ridicule,  and 
the  laughter  was  closely  akin  to  jeering. 

Meantime  a  terrible  dread  was  brooding 
over  the  minds  of  the  Virginian  people. 
They  were  brave  men  and  patriots,  who 
would  maintain  their  honor  at  any  cost. 
They  were  ready  to  sacrifice  their  lives  and 
their  treasures  in  a  hopeless  struggle  about 
an  abstraction,  should  the  time  come  when 
their  sense  of  right  and  honor  required  the 
sacrifice  at  their  hands.  There  was  no 
cowardice  and  no  hesitation  to  be  expected 


The  Mustering.  15 

of  them  when  the  call  should  come.  But 
they  dreaded  war,  and  most  of  them  prayed 
that  it  might  never  be.  They  saw  only 
desolation  in  its  face.  They  knew  it  would 
lay  waste  their  fields  and  bring  want  upon 
their  families,  however  it  might  result  in 
regard  to  the  great  political  questions  in 
volved  in  it.  And  so  they  refused  to  go 
headlong  into  a  war  which  meant  for  them 
destruction.  Some  of  them,  believing  that 
there  was  no  possibility  of  avoiding  the 
struggle,  thought  it  the  part  of  wisdom  to 
accept  the  inevitable  and  begin  hostilities 
at  once,  while  the  North  was  still  but  poorly 
prepared  for  aggressive  measures.  But  the 
majority  of  the  Virginians  were  disposed  to 
wait  and  to  avoid  war  altogether,  if  that 
should  prove  possible.  These  said,  "  We 
should  remain  quiet  until  some  overt  act  of 
hostility  shall  make  resistance  necessary." 
And  these  were  called  cowards  and  fogies 
by  the  brave  men  of  the  hustings  already 
alluded  to. 


1 6         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

There  was  still  another  class  of  men  whc 
were  opposed  to  secession  in  any  case.  Of 
these,  William  C.  Wickham,  of  Hanover,  and 
Jubal  Early  will  serve  as  examples.  They 
thought  secession  unnecessary  and  impru 
dent  in  any  conceivable  event.  They  be 
lieved  that  it  offered  no  remedy  for  existing 
or  possible  ills,  and  that  it  could  result  only 
in  the  prostration  of  the  South.  They  op 
posed  it,  therefore,  with  all  their  might ; 
not  only  as  not  yet  called  for,  but  as  sui 
cidal  in  any  event,  and  not  to  be  thought  of 
at  all.  And  yet  these  men,  when  the  war 
came,  believed  it  to  be  their  duty  to  side 
with  their  State,  and  fought  so  manfully  in 
behalf  of  the  South  as  to  make  themselves 
famous  military  leaders. 

Why,  then,  the  reader  doubtless  asks,  if 
this  was  the  temper  of  the  Virginians,  did 
Virginia  secede  after  all  ?  I  answer,  be 
cause  circumstances  ultimately  so  placed 
the  Virginians  that  they  could  not,  without 
cowardice  and  dishonor,  do  otherwise ;  and 


The  Mustering.  17 

the  Virginians  are  brave  men  and  honora 
ble  ones.  They  believed,  as  I  have  said,  in 
the  abstract  right  of  any  State  to  secede  at 
will.  Indeed,  this  right  was  to  them  as 
wholly  unquestioned  and  unquestionable  as 
is  the  right  of  the  States  to  establish  free 
schools,  or  to  do  any  other  thing  pertain 
ing  to  local  self-government.  The  ques 
tion  of  the  correctness  or  incorrectness  of 
the  doctrine  is  not  now  to  the  purpose. 
The  Virginians,  almost  without  an  excep 
tion,  believed  and  had  always  believed  it 
absolutely,  and  believing  it,  they  held  of 
necessity  that  the  general  government  had 
no  right,  legal  or  moral,  to  coerce  a  seced 
ing  State ;  and  so,  when  the  President 
called  upon  Virginia  for  her  quota  of  troops 
with  which  to  compel  the  return  of  the  se 
ceding  States,  she  could  not  possibly  obey 
without  doing  that  which  her  people  be 
lieved  to  be  an  outrage  upon  the  rights  of 
sister  commonwealths,  for  which,  as  they 
held,  there  was  no  warrant  in  law  or  equity, 

2 


1 8         A  Rebel's  Recollection*. 

She  heartily  condemned  the  secession  of 
South  Carolina  and  the  rest  as  unnecessary, 
ill-advised,  and  dangerous  ;  but  their  seces 
sion  did  not  concern  her  except  as  a  looker- 
on,  and  she  had  not  only  refused  to  be  a 
partaker  in  it,  but  had  also  felt  a  good  deal 
of  indignation  against  the  men  who  were 
thus  endangering  the  peace  of  the  land. 
When  she  was  called  upon  to  assist  in  re 
ducing  these  States  to  submission,  however, 
she  could  no  longer  remain  a  spectator. 
She  must  furnish  the  troops,  and  so  assist 
in  doing  that  which  she  believed  to  be  ut 
terly  wrong,  or  she  must  herself  withdraw 
from  the  Union.  The  question  was  thus 
narrowed  down  to  this  :  Should  Virginia 
seek  safety  in  dishonor,  or  should  she  meet 
destruction  in  doing  that  which  she  be 
lieved  to  be  right  ?  Such  a  question  was 
not  long  to  be  debated.  Two  days  after 
the  proclamation  was  published  Virginia 
seceded,  not  because  she  wanted  to  secede, 
—  not  because  she  believed  it  wise,  —  but 


The  Mustering.  19 

because,  as  she  understood  the  matter,  the . 
only  other  course  open  to  her  would  have 
been  cowardly  and  dishonorable. 

Now,  unless  I  am  sadly  mistaken,  the 
Virginians  understood  what  secession  im 
plied  much  more  perfectly  than  did  the  rest 
of  the  Southern  people.  They  anticipated 
no  child's  play,  and  having  cast  in  their  lot 
with  the  South,  they  began  at  once  to  get 
ready  for  war.  From  one  end  of  the  State 
to  the  other,  every  county  seat  became  a 
drill  field.  The  courts  suspended  their  ses 
sions,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  a 
proper  time  for  the  enforced  collection  of 
debts.  Volunteer  companies  soon  drained 
the  militia  organization  of  its  men.  Public 
opinion  said  that  every  man  who  did  not 
embrace  the  very  surest  and  earliest  oppor 
tunity  of  getting  himself  mustered  into 
actual  service  was  a  coward  ;  and  so,  to 
withdraw  from  the  militia  and  join  a  volun 
teer  company,  and  make  a  formal  tender  of 
services  to  the  State,  became  absolutely  es- 


2O         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

sential  to  the  maintenance  of  one's  reputa 
tion  as  a  gentleman. 

The  drilling,  of  which  there  was  literally 
no  end,  was  simply  funny.  Maneuvers  of 
the  most  utterly  impossible  sort  were  care 
fully  taught  to  the  men.  Every  amateul 
officer  had  his  own  pet  system  of  tactics, 
and  the  effect  of  the  incongruous  teachings, 
when  brought  out  in  battalion  drill,  closely 
resembled  that  of  the  music  at  Mr.  Bob 
Sawyer's  party,  where  each  guest  sang  the 
chorus  to  the  tune  he  knew  best. 

The  militia  colonels,  having  assumed  a 
sort  of  general  authority  over  the  volunteer 
companies  which  had  been  formed  out  of 
the  old  militia  material,  were  not  satisfied 
with  daily  musterings  of  the  men  under 
their  captains,  —  musterings  which  left  the 
field-officers  nothing  to  do,  —  and  so  in  a 
good  many  of  the  counties  they  ordered  all 
the  men  into  camp  at  the  county  seat,  and 
drew  upon  the  people  for  provisions  with 
which  to  feed  them.  The  camps  were 


The  Mustering.  21 

irregular,  disorderly  affairs,  over  which  no 
rod  of  discipline  could  very  well  be  held,  as 
the  men  were  not  legally  soldiers,  and  the 
only  punishment  possible  for  disobedience 
or  neglect  of  duty  was  a  small  fine,  which 
the  willful  men,  with  true  Virginian  con 
tempt  for  money  in  small  sums,  paid  cheer 
fully  as  a  tax  upon  jollity. 

The  camping,  however,  was  enjoyable  in 
itself,  and  as  most  of  the  men  had  nothing 
else  to  do,  the  attendance  upon  roll-call  was 
a  pretty  full  one.  Every  man  brought  a 
servant  or  two  with  him,  of  course.  How 
else  were  his  boots  and  his  accouterments 
to  be  kept  clean,  his  horse  to  be  groomed, 
and  his  meals  cooked  ?  Most  of  the  ladies 
came,  too,  in  their  carriages  every  morning, 
returning  to  their  homes  only  as  night 
came  on  ;  and  so  the  camps  were  very  pict 
uresque  and  very  delightful  places  to  be  in. 
All  the  men  wore  epaulets  of  a  gorgeous- 
ness  rarely  equaled  except  in  portraits  of 
field-marshals,  and  every  man  was  a  here 
in  immediate  prospect. 


22          A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

One  day  an  alarming  report  came,  to  the 
effect  that  a  little  transport  steamer,  well 
known  in  James  River,  was  on  her  way  up 
to  Richmond  with  ten  thousand  troops  on 
board,  and  instantly  the  camps  at  the  court 
houses  along  the  railroads  were  astir.  It 
entered  into  nobody's  head  to  inquire  where 
so  many  troops  could  have  come  from  at  a 
time  when  the  entire  active  force  of  the 
United  States  army  from  Maine  to  Oregon 
was  hardly  greater  than  that ;  nor  did  any 
body  seem  surprised  that  the  whole  ten 
thousand  had  managed  to  bestow  them 
selves  on  board  a  steamer  the  carrying 
capacity  of  which  had  hitherto  been  about 
four  or  five  hundred  men.  The  report  was 
accepted  as  true,  and  everybody  believed 
that  the  ten  thousand  men  would  be  poured 
into  Richmond's  defenseless  streets  within 
an  hour  or  two.  In  the  particular  county 
to  which  I  have  alluded  in  the  beginning 
of  this  chapter,  the  cavalry  captain  sent  for 
half  a  dozen  grindstones,  and  set  his  men 


Mustering.  23 

to  grinding  their  sabres,  —  a  process  which 
utterly  ruined  the  blades,  of  course.  The 
militia  colonel  telegraphed  a  stump  speech 
or  two  to  Richmond,  which  did  no  partic 
ular  harm,  as  the  old  station  agent  who 
officiated  as  operator  could  not  for  his  life 
send  a  message  of  more  than  three  words 
so  that  it  could  be  read  at  the  other  end 
of  the  line.  A  little  telegraphic  swearing 
came  back  over  the  wires,  but  beyond  that 
the  colonel's  glowing  messages  resulted  in 
nothing.  Turning  his  attention  to  matters 
more  immediately  within  his  control,  there 
fore,  he  ordered  the  drums  to  beat,  and  as 
sembling  the  men  he  marched  them  boldly 
down  to  the  railroad  station,  where  mount 
ing  a  goods  box  he  told  them  that  the  time 
for  speech-making  was  now  past ;  that  the 
enemy  (I  am  not  sure  that  he  did  not  say 
"  vandal,"  and  make  some  parenthetical  re 
marks  about  "  Attila  flags  "  and  things  of 
that  sort  which  were  favorites  with  him) 
was  now  at  our  very  thresholds  ;  that  he 


24.         A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

(the  colonel)  had  marched  his  command  to 
the  depot  in  answer  to  the  call  of  his  coun 
try  ;  that  they  would  proceed  thence  by 
rail  to  Richmond  and  at  once  encounter 
the  enemy,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.  He  had  already 
telegraphed,  he  said,  to  General  Lee  and 
to  Governor  Letcher,  requesting  them  to 
dispatch  a  train  (the  colonel  would  have 
scorned  to  say  "  send  cars  "  even  in  a  tele 
gram),  and  the  iron  horse  was  doubtless 
already  on  its  way. 

No  train  came,  however,  and  after  night 
fall  the  men  were  marched  back  to  their 
quarters  in  the  court-house. 

A  few  days  later  some  genuine  orders 
came  from  Richmond,  accepting  the  prof 
fered  services  of  all  the  companies  organ 
ized  in  the  county,  and  ordering  all,  except 
the  one  cavalry  troop,  into  camp  at  Rich 
mond.  These  orders,  by  some  strange 
oversight,  the  colonel  explained,  were  ad 
dressed,  not  to  him  as  colonel,  but  to  the 
several  captains  individually.  He  was  not 


The  Mustering.  25 

disposed  to  stand  on  ceremony,  however,  he 
said  ;  and  so,  without  waiting  for  the  cler 
ical  error  to  be  rectified,  he  would  comply 
with  the  spirit  of  the  order,  and  take  the 
troops  to  Richmond  as  soon  as  the  neces 
sary  transportation  should  arrive.  Trans 
portation  was  a  good,  mouth-filling  word, 
which  suited  the  colonel  exactly.  In  order 
that  there  should  be  no  delay  or  miscar 
riage,  he  marched  the  men  a  hundred  yards 
down  the  hill  to  the  station,  ten  hours  in 
advance  of  the  time  at  which  the  cars  were 
to  be  there  ;  and  as  there  was  nothing  else 
to  do,  he  and  his  lieutenant  thought  the 
occasion  a  good  one  for  the  making  of  a 
speech  apiece.  The  colonel  expressed  his 
hearty  sympathy  with  the  woes  of  the  cav 
alry,  who  were  to  be  left  at  home,  while  the 
infantry  was  winning  renown.  And  yet,  he 
said,  he  had  expected  this  from  the  first. 
The  time  had  been,  he  explained,  when  the 
cavalry  was  the  quick-moving  arm  of  the 
service,  but  now  that  the  iron  horse  —  The 


26         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

reader  must  imagine  the  rest  of  that  gran 
diloquent  sentence.  I  value  my  reputation 
for  veracity  too  much  to  risk  it  by  follow 
ing  the  colonel  in  this,  his  supreme  burst  of 
impassioned  oratory.  He  was  sorry  for  the 
cavalry,  but  they  should  console  themselves 
with  the  thought  that,  as  preservers  of  or 
der  in  the  community  and  protectors  of 
their  homes,  they  would  not  be  wholly  use 
less  in  their  own  humble  way  ;  and  should 
any  of  them  visit  the  army,  they  would  al 
ways  meet  a  hearty  welcome  in  his  camp. 
For  the  present  his  head-quarters  would  be 
in  the  Spottswood  Hotel,  and  he  would  be 
glad,  whenever  military  duty  did  not  too 
greatly  absorb  his  attention,  to  grasp  the 
hand  of  any  member  of  the  troop  who, 
wishing  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  real  warfare, 
should  seek  him  there. 

The  train  came,  after  a  while,  and  the 
unappreciative  railroad  men  obstinately  in 
sisted  that  the  State  paid  for  the  passage 
of  certain  designated  companies  only,  and 


The  Mustering.  27 

that  these  distinguished  field-officers,  if  the) 
traveled  by  that  train  at  all,  must  pay  theii 
way  at  regular  passenger  rates.  The  colo 
nel  and  his  lieutenant  pocketed  the  insult 
and  paid  their  fare  ;  but  when,  upon  the 
arrival  of  the  troops  at  Richmond,  nobody 
seemed  to  know  anything  about  these  field- 
officers,  and  the  companies  were  sent,  with 
out  them,  into  camps  of  instruction,  the  gal 
lant  leaders  returned  by  passenger  train  to 
their  homes.  The  colonel  came  back,  he 
said  in  a  speech  at  the  station,  still  further 
to  stir  the  patriotism  of  the  people.  He 
had  been  in  consultation  with  the  authori 
ties  in  Richmond  ;  and  while  it  would  not 
be  proper  for  him  to  reveal  even  to  these, 
his  patriotic  countrymen,  the  full  plan  of 
campaign  confided  to  him  as  a  field-officer, 
he  might  at  least  say  to  them  that  the  gov 
ernment,  within  ten  days,  would  have  fif 
teen  thousand  men  in  line  on  the  Potomac, 
and  then,  with  perchance  a  bloody  but  very 
brief  struggle,  this  overwhelming  force 


28         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

would  dictate  terms  to  the  tyrants  at 
Washington. 

This  time  the  colonel  got  himself  unmis 
takably  laughed  at,  and,  so  far  as  I  have 
heard,  he  made  no  more  speeches. 

Meantime  it  had  become  evident  to 
everybody  that  a  very  real  and  a  very  ter 
rible  war  was  in  prospect,  and  there  was  no 
longer  any  disposition  to  tolerate  nonsense 
of  the  sort  I  have  been  describing.  As  fast 
as  arrangements  could  be  made  for  their 
accommodation,  the  volunteers  from  every 
part  of  the  State  were  ordered  into  camps 
of  instruction  at  Richmond  and  Ashland. 
As  soon  as  any  company  was  deemed  fit 
for  service,  it  was  sent  to  the  front  and  as 
signed  to  a  regiment.  Troops  from  other 
States  were  constantly  pouring  into  Rich 
mond,  and  marching  thence  to  the  armies 
which  were  forming  in  the  field.  The 
speech-making  was  over  forever,  and  the 
work  of  the  war  had  begun. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  MEN  WHO  MADE  THE  ARMY. 

A  NEWSPAPER  correspondent  has  told  us 
that  the  great  leader  of  the  German  armies, 
Count  Von  Moltke,  has  never  read  anything 
—  even  a  history  —  of  our  war,  and  that 
when  questioned  on  the  subject,  he  has  said 
he  could  not  afford  to  spend  time  over  "  the 
wrangling  of  two  armed  mobs."  If  he  ever 
said  anything  of  the  kind,  which  is  doubt 
ful,  his  characterization  of  the  two  armies 
had  reference,  probably,  to  their  condition 
during  the  first  year  or  two  of  the  struggle, 
when  they  could  lay  very  little  claim  in 
deed  to  any  more  distinctively  military  title. 
The  Southern  army,  at  any  rate,  was  simply 
a  vast  mob  of  rather  ill-armed  young  gen 
tlemen  from  the  country.1  As  I  have  said 

1  In  order  that  no  reader  may  misconceive  the  spirit 


3O         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

in  a  previous  chapter,  every  gentleman  in 
Virginia,  not  wholly  incapable  of  rendering 
service,  enlisted  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  and  the  companies,  unarmed,  untrained, 
and  hardly  even  organized,  were  sent  at 
once  to  camps  of  instruction.  Here  they 

in  which  this  chapter  is  written,  I  wish  to  say,  at  the  out 
set,  that  in  commenting  upon  the  material  of  which  the 
Southern  army  was  made  up,  nothing  has  been  further 
from  my  thought  than  to  reflect,  even  by  implication, 
upon  the  character  of  the  Union  army  or  of  the  men  who 
composed  it,  for  indeed  I  honor  both  as  highly  as  any 
body  can.  I  think  I  have  outlived  whatever  war  preju 
dices  T  may  have  brought  with  me  out  of  the  struggle, 
and  in  writing  of  some  of  the  better  characteristics  of  the 
early  Virginian  volunteers,  I  certainly  have  not  meant 
to  deny  equal  or  like  excellence  to  their  foemen.  I  hap 
pen,  however,  to  know  a  great  deal  about  the  one  army 
and  very  little  about  the  other, — a  state  of  things  con 
sequent  upon  the  peculiar  warmth  with  which  we  were 
always  greeted  whenever  we  undertook  to  visit  the  camps 
of  our  friends  on  the  other  side.  Will  the  reader  please 
bear  in  mind,  then,  that  my  estimate  of  the  character  of 
the  Southern  troops  is  a  positive  and  not  a  comparative 
one,  and  that  nothing  said  in  praise  of  the  one  army  is 
meant  to  be  a  reflection  upon  the  other  ?  Between  Bull 
Run  and  Appomattox  I  had  ample  opportunity  to  learn 
respect  for  the  courage  and  manliness  of  the  men  who 
overcame  us,  and  since  the  close  of  the  war  I  have 
learned  to  know  many  of  them  as  tried  and  true  friends, 
*nd  gentlemen  of  noblest  mold. 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    31 

were  in  theory  drilled  and  disciplined  and 
made  into  soldiers,  by  the  little  handful  of 
available  West-Pointers  and  the  lads  from 
the  Military  Institute  at  Lexington  In 
point  of  fact,  they  were  only  organized  and 
taught  the  rudiments  of  the  drill  before  be 
ing  sent  to  the  front  as  full-fledged  soldiers  ; 
and  it  was  only  after  a  year  or  more  of  act 
ive  service  in  the  field  that  they  began  to 
suspect  what  the  real  work  and  the  real 
character  of  the  modern  soldier  is. 

Our  ideas  of  the  life  and  business  of  a 
soldier  were  drawn  chiefly  from  the  advent 
ures  of  Ivanhoe  and  Charles  O'Malley,  two 
worthies  with  whose  personal  history  al 
most  every  man  in  the  army  was  familiar 
The  men  who  volunteered  went  to  war  of 
their  own  accord,  and  were  wholly  unaccus 
tomed  to  acting  on  any  other  than  their 
own  motion.  They  were  hardy  lovers  of 
field  sports,  accustomed  to  out-door  life,  and 
in  all  physical  respects  excellent  material 
of  which  to  make  an  army.  But  they  were 


32         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

not  used  to  control  of  any  sort,  and  were 
not  disposed  to  obey  anybody  except  foi 
good  and  sufficient  reason  given.  While 
actually  on  drill  they  obeyed  the  word  of 
command,  not  so  much  by  reason  of  its 
being  proper  to  obey  a  command,  as  be 
cause  obedience  was  in  that  case  necessary 
to  the  successful  issue  of  a  pretty  perform 
ance  in  which  they  were  interested.  Off 
drill  they  did  as  they  pleased,  holding  them 
selves  gentlemen,  and  as  such  bound  to 
consult  only  their  own  wills.  Their  officers 
were  of  themselves,  chosen  by  election,  and 
subject,  by  custom,  to  enforced  resignation 
upon  petition  of  the  men.  Only  corporals 
cared  sufficiently  little  for  their  position  to 
risk  any  magnifying  of  their  office  by  the 
enforcement  of  discipline.  I  make  of  them 
an  honorable  exception,  out  of  regard  for 
the  sturdy  corporal  who,  at  Ashland, 
marched  six  of  us  (a  guard  detail)  through 
the  very  middle  of  a  puddle,  assigning  as 
his  reason  for  doing  so  the  fact  that  "  It 's 


77ie  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    33 

plagued  little  authority  they  give  us  cor 
porals,  and  I  mean  to  use  that  little,  any 
how."  Even  corporals  were  elected,  how 
ever,  and  until  December,  1861,  I  never 
knew  a  single  instance  in  which  a  captain 
dared  offend  his  men  by  breaking  a  non 
commissioned  officer,  or  appointing  one, 
without  submitting  the  matter  to  a  vote  of 
the  company.  In  that  first  instance  the 
captain  had  to  bolster  himself  up  with  writ 
ten  authority  from  head-quarters,  and  even 
then  it  required  three  weeks  of  mingled 
diplomacy  and  discipline  to  quell  the  mu 
tiny  which  resulted. 

With  troops  of  this  kind,  the  reader  will 
readily  understand,  a  feeling  of  very  demo 
cratic  equality  prevailed,  so  far  at  least  as 
military  rank  had  anything  to  do  with  it. 
Officers  were  no  better  than  men,  and  so 
officers  and  men  messed  and  slept  together 
on  terms  of  entire  equality,  quarreling  and 
even  fighting  now  and  then,  in  a  gentle 
manly  way,  but  without  a  thought  of  allow- 
3 


34         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

ing  differences  of  military  rank  to  have  any 
influence  in  the  matter.  The  theory  was 
that  the  officers  were  the  creatures  of  the 
men,  chosen  by  election  to  represent  their 
constituency  in  the  performance  of  certain 
duties,  and  that  only  during  good  behavior. 
And  to  this  theory  the  officers  themselves 
gave  in  their  adhesion  in  a  hundred  ways. 
Indeed,  they  could  do  nothing  else,  inas 
much  as  they  knew  no  way  of  quelling  a 
mutiny. 

There  was  one  sort  of  rank,  however, 
which  was  both  maintained  and  respected 
from  the  first,  namely,  that  of  social  life. 
The  line  of  demarkation  between  gentry 
and  common  people  is  not  more  sharply 
drawn  anywhere  than  in  Virginia.  It  rests 
there  upon  an  indeterminate  something  or 
other,  known  as  family.  To  come  of  a 
good  family  is  a  patent  of  nobility,  and 
there  is  no  other  way  whatever  by  which 
any  man  or  any  woman  can  find  a  passage 
into  the  charmed  circle  of  Virginia's  peer- 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    35 

age.  There  is  no  college  of  heralds,  to  be 
sure,  to  which  doubtful  cases  may  be  re 
ferred,  and  there  is  no  law  governing  the 
matter ;  but  every  Virginian  knows  what 
families  are,  and  what  are  not  good  ones, 
and  so  mistakes  are  impossible.  The  social 
position  of  every  man  is  sharply  defined, 
and  every  man  carried  it  with  him  into  the 
army.  The  man  of  good  family  felt  him 
self  superior,  as  in  most  cases  he  unques 
tionably  was,  to  his  fellow-soldier  of  less 
excellent  birth ;  and  this  distinction  was 
sufficient,  during  the  early  years  of  the  war, 
to  override  everything  like  military  rank. 
In  one  instance  which  I  remember,  a  young 
private  asserted  his  superiority  of  social 
standing  so  effectually  as  to  extort  from 
the  lieutenant  commanding  his  company  a 
public  apology  for  an  insult  offered  in  the 
subjection  of  the  private  to  double  duty,  as 
a  punishment  for  absence  from  roll-call. 
The  lieutenant  was  brave  enough  to  have 
taken  a  flogging  at  the  hands  of  the  in- 


30         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

suited  private,  perhaps,  but  he  could  not 
face  the  declared  sentiment  of  the  entire 
company,  and  so  he  apologized.  I  have 
known  numberless  cases  in  which  privates 
have  declined  dinner  and  other  invitations 
from  officers  who  had  presumed  upon  their 
shoulder-straps  in  asking  the  company  of 
their  social  superiors. 

In  the  camp  of  instruction  at  Ashland, 
where  the  various  cavalry  companies  exist 
ing  in  Virginia  were  sent  to  be  made  into 
soldiers,  it  was  a  very  common  thing  in 
deed  for  men  who  grew  tired  of  camp  fare 
to  take  their  meals  at  the  hotel,  and  one  or 
two  of  them  rented  cottages  and  brought 
their  families  there,  excusing  themselves 
from  attendance  upon  unreasonably  early 
roll-calls,  by  pleading  the  distance  from 
their  cottages  to  the  parade-ground.  When 
ever  a  detail  was  made  for  the  purpose  of 
cleaning  the  camp-ground,  the  men  detailed 
regarded  themselves  as  responsible  for  the 
proper  performance  of  the  task  by  theii 


7^ he  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    37 

servants,  and  uncomplainingly  took  upon 
themselves  the  duty  of  sitting  on  the  fence 
and  superintending  the  work.  The  two  or 
three  men  of  the  overseer  class  who  were 
to  be  found  in  nearly  every  company  turned 
some  nimble  quarters  by  standing  other 
men's  turns  of  guard-duty  at  twenty-five 
cents  an  hour  ;  and  one  young  gentleman 
of  my  own  company,  finding  himself  as 
signed  to  a  picket  rope  post,  where  his  only 
duty  was  to  guard  the  horses  and  prevent 
them,  in  their  untrained  exuberance  of 
spirit,  from  becoming  entangled  in  each 
other's  heels  and  halters,  coolly  called  his 
servant  and  turned  the  matter  over  to  him, 
with  a  rather  informal  but  decidedly  pointed 
injunction  not  to  let  those  horses  get  them 
selves  into  trouble  if  he  valued  his  hide. 
This  case  coming  to  the  ears  of  Colonel 
(afterwards  General)  Ewell,  who  was  com 
manding  the  camp,  that  officer  reorganized 
the  guard  service  upon  principles  as  novel 
as  they  were  objectionable  to  the  men. 


38         A   Rebel's  Recollections, 

He  required  the  men  to  stand  their  own 
turns,  and,  worse  than  that,  introduced  the 
system,  in  vogue  among  regular  troops,  of 
keeping  the  entire  guard  detail  at  the  guard 
house  when  not  on  post,  an  encroachment: 
upon  personal  liberty  which  sorely  tried  the 
patience  of  the  young  cavaliers. 

It  was  in  this  undisciplined  state  that  the 
men  who  afterwards  made  up  the  army 
under  Lee  were  sent  to  the  field  to  meet 
the  enemy  at  Bull  Run  and  elsewhere,  and 
the  only  wonder  is  that  they  were  ever  able 
to  fight  at  all.  They  were  certainly  not 
soldiers.  They  were  as  ignorant  of  the 
alphabet  of  obedience  as  their  officers  were 
of  the  art  of  commanding.  And  yet  they 
acquitted  themselves  reasonably  well,  a  fact 
which  can  be  explained  only  by  reference 
to  the  causes  of  their  insubordination  in 
camp.  These  men  were  the  people  of  the 
South,  and  the  war  was  their  own  ;  where 
fore  they  fought  to  win  it  of  their  own 
accord,  and  not  at  all  because  their  officers 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    39 

commanded  them  to  do  so.  Their  personal  u 
spirit  and  their  intelligence  were  their  sole 
elements  of  strength.  Death  has  few  ter 
rors  for  such  men,  as  compared  with  dis 
honor,  and  so  they  needed  no  officers  at  all,  ^ 
and  no  discipline,  to  insure  their  personal 
good  conduct  on  the  field  of  battle.  The 
same  elements  of  character,  too,  made  them 
accept  hardship  with  the  utmost  cheerful 
ness,  as  soon  as  hardship  became  a  nec 
essary  condition  to  the  successful  prosecu 
tion  of  a  war  that  every  man  of  them 
regarded  as  his  own.  In  camp,  at  Rich 
mond  or  Ashland,  they  had  shunned  all 
unnecessary  privation  and  all  distasteful 
duty,  because  they  then  saw  no  occasion  to 
endure  avoidable  discomfort.  But  in  the 
field  they  showed  themselves  great,  stalwart 
men  in  spirit  as  well  as  in  bodily  frame, 
and  endured  cheerfully  the  hardships  of 
campaigning  precisely  as  they  would  have 
borne  the  fatigues  of  a  hunt,  as  incidents 
encountered  in  the  prosecution  of  their  pur 
poses. 


40         A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

During  the  spring  and  early  summer  of 
1 86 1,  the  men  did  not  dream  that  they 
were  to  be  paid  anything  for  their  services, 
or  even  that  the  government  was  to  clothe 
them.  They  had  bought  their  own  uni 
forms,  and  whenever  these  wore  out  they 
ordered  new  ones  to  be  sent,  by  the  first 
opportunity,  from  home.  I  remember  the 
very  first  time  the  thought  of  getting  cloth 
ing  from  the  government  ever  entered  my 
own  mind.  I  was  serving  in  Stuart's  cav 
alry,  and  the  summer  of  1861  was  nearly 
over.  My  boots  had  worn  out,  and  as 
there  happened  at  the  time  to  be  a  strict 
embargo  upon  all  visiting  on  the  part  of 
non-military  people,  I  could  not  get  a  new 
pair  from  home.  The  spurs  of  my  com 
rades  had  made  uncomfortable  impressions 
upon  my  bare  feet  every  day  for  a  week, 
when  some  one  suggested  that  I  might 
possibly  buy  a  pair  of  boots  from  the  quar 
termaster,  who  was  for  the  first  time  in 
possession  of  some  government  property  of 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    41 

that  description.  When  I  returned  with 
the  boots  and  reported  that  the  official  had 
refused  my  proffered  cash,  contenting  him 
self  with  charging  the  amount  against  me 
as  a  debit  to  be  deducted  from  the  amount 
of  my  pay  and  clothing  allowance,  there  was 
great  merriment  in  the  camp.  The  idea 
that  there  was  anybody  back  of  us  in  this 
war  —  anybody  who  could,  by  any  ingenu 
ity  of  legal  quibbling,  be  supposed  to  be 
indebted  to  us  for  our  voluntary  services  in 
our  own  cause  —  was  too  ridiculous  to  be 
treated  seriously.  "  Pay  money "  became 
the  standing  subject  for  jests.  The  card- 
playing  with  which  the  men  amused  them 
selves  suffered  a  revolution  at  once ;  eu 
chre  gave  place  to  poker,  played  for  "  pay 
money,"  the  winnings  to  fall  due  when  pay 
day  should  come,  —  a  huge  joke  which  was 
heartily  enjoyed. 

From  this  the  reader  will  see  how  little 
was  done  in  the  beginning  of  the  war  to 
ward  the  orgar'^tion  °f  an  efficient  quar- 


42          A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

termaster's  department,  and  how  completel) 
this  ill-organized  and  undisciplined  mob  of 
plucky  gentlemen  was  left  to  prosecute  the 
war  as  best  it  could,  trusting  to  luck  for 
clothing  and  even  for  food.  Of  these 
things  I  shall  have  occasion  to  speak  more 
fully  in  a  future  chapter,  wherein  I  shall 
have  something  to  say  of  the  management 
of  affairs  at  Richmond.  At  present,  I 
merely  refer  to  the  matter  for  the  purpose 
of  correcting  an  error  (if  I  may  hope  to  do 
that)  which  seems  likely  to  creep  into  his 
tory.  We  have  been  told  over  and  over 
again  that  the  Confederate  army  could  not 
possibly  have  given  effectual  pursuit  to 
General  McDowell's  flying  forces  after  the 
battle  of  Bull  Run.  It  is  urged,  in  defense 
of  the  inaction  which  made  of  that  day's 
work  a  waste  effort,  that  we  could  not  move 
forward  for  want  of  transportation  and  sup 
plies.  Now,  without  discussing  the  ques 
tion  whether  or  not  a  prompt  movement  on 
Washington  would  have  resulted  favorabl 


The  Men  uho  Made  the  Army.    43 

to  the  Confedecates,  I  am  certain,  as  every 
man  who  was  there  is,  that  this  want  of 
transportation  and  supplies  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  it.  We  had  no  sup 
plies  of  any  importance,  it  is  true,  but  none 
were  coming  to  us  there,  and  we  were  no 
whit  better  off  in  this  regard  at  Manassas 
than  we  would  have  been  before  Washing 
ton.  And  having  nothing  to  transport,  we 
needed  no  transportation.  Had  the  inef 
ficiency  of  the  supply  department  stopped 
short  at  its  failure  to  furnish  wagon  trains, 
it  might  have  stood  in  the  way  of  a  forward 
movement.  But  that  was  no  ordinary  in 
competence  which  governed  this  depart 
ment  of  our  service  in  all  its  ramifications. 
The  breadth  and  comprehensiveness  of  that 
incompetence  were  its  distinguishing  char 
acteristics.  In  failing  to  furnish  anything 
to  transport,  it  neutralized  its  failure  to 
furnish  transportation,  and  the  army  that 
fought  at  Bull  Run  would  have  been  as 
well  off  anywhere  else  as  there,  during  the 


44         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

next  ten  days.  Indeed,  two  days  after  the 
battle  we  were  literally  starved  out  at  Ma- 
nassas,  and  were  forced  to  advance  to  Fair 
fax  Court  House  in  order  to  get  the  sup 
plies  which  the  Union  army  had  left  in 
abundance  wherever  there  was  a  storing- 
place  for  them.  The  next  morning  after 
the  battle,  many  of  the  starving  men  went 
off  on  their  own  account  to  get  provisions, 
and  they  knew  very  well  where  to  find 
them.  There  were  none  at  Manassas,  but 
by  crossing  Bull  Run  and  following  the  line 
of  the  Federal  retreat,  we  soon  gathered  a 
store  sufficient  to  last  us,  while  the  authori 
ties  of  the  quartermaster's  department  were 
finding  out  how  to  transport  the  few  sheet- 
iron  frying-pans  which,  with  an  unnecessary 
tent  here  and  there,  were  literally  the  only 
things  there  were  to  be  transported  at  all. 
Food,  which  was  the  only  really  necessary 
thing  just  then,  lay  ahead  of  us  and  no 
where  else.  All  the  ammunition  we  had 
we  could  and  did  move  with  the  wagons  at 
hand. 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    45 

To  return  to  the  temper  of  the  troops 
and  people.  Did  the  Southerners  really 
think  themselves  a  match  for  ten  times 
their  own  numbers  ?  I  know  the  reader 
wants  to  ask  this  question,  because  almost 
everybody  I  talk  to  on  the  subject  asks  it 
in  one  shape  or  another.  In  answer  let  me 
say,  I  think  a  few  of  the  more  enthusiastic 
women,  cherishing  a  blind  faith  in  the 
righteousness  of  their  cause,  and  believing, 
in  spite  of  historical  precedent,  that  wars 
always  end  with  strict  regard  to  the  laws 
of  poetic  justice,  did  think  something  of  the 
sort  ;  and  I  am  certain  that  all  the  stump 
speakers  of  the  kind  I  have  hitherto  de 
scribed  held  a  like  faith  most  devoutly. 
But  with  these  exceptions  I  never  saw  any 
Southerner  who  hoped  for  any  but  well- 
fought-for  success.  It  was  not  a  question 
of  success  or  defeat  with  them  at  all.  They 
thought  they  saw  their  duty  plainly,  and  ^ 
they  did  it  without  regard  to  the  conse 
quences.  Their  whole  hearts  were  in  the 


46         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

cause,  and  as  they  were  human  beings  they 
naturally  learned  to  expect  the  result  for 
which  they  were  laboring  and  righting  and 
suffering  ;  but  they  based  no  hopes  upon 
any  such  fancy  as  that  the  Virginian  sol 
dier  was  the  military  equivalent  of  ten  or  of 
two  Pennsylvanians  armed  as  well  as  he. 
On  the  contrary,  they  busily  counted  the 
chances  and  weighed  the  probabilities  on 
both  sides  from  the  first.  They  claimed  an 
advantage  in  the  fact  that  their  young  men 
were  more  universally  accustomed  to  field 
sports  and  the  use  of  arms  than  were  those 
of  the  North.  They  thought  too,  that, 
fighting  on  their  own  soil,  in  an  essentially 
defensive  struggle,  they  would  have  some 
advantage,  as  they  certainly  did.  They 
thought  they  might  in  the  end  tire  their 
enemy  out,  and  they  hoped  from  the  first 
for  relief  through  foreign  intervention  in 
some  shape.  These  were  the  grounds  of 
their  hopes  ;  but  had  there  been  no  hope 
for  them  at  all,  I  verily  believe  they  would 


The  Min  who  Made  the  Army.    47 

have  fought  all  the  same.  Certainly  they 
had  small  reason  to  hope  for  success  after 
the  campaign  of  1863,  but  they  fought  on 
nevertheless,  until  they  could  fight  no  more. 
Let  the  reader  remember  that  as  the  South 
erners  understood  the  case,  they  could  not, 
without  a  complete  sacrifice  of  honor,  do 
anything  else  than  fight  on  until  utterly 
crushed,  and  he  will  then  be  prepared  to 
understand  how  small  a  figure  the  question 
of  success  or  failure  cut  in  determining 
their  course. 

The  unanimity  of  the  people  was  simply 
marvelous.  So  long  as  the  question  of 
secession  was  under  discussion,  opinions 
were  both  various  and  violent.  The  mo 
ment  secession  was  finally  determined  upon, 
a  revolution  was  wrought.  There  was  no 
longer  anything  to  discuss,  and  so  discus 
sion  ceased.  Men  got  ready  for  war,  and 
delicate  women  with  equal  spirit  sent  them 
off  with  smiling  faces.  The  man  who  tar 
ried  at  home  for  never  so  brief  a  time, 


48         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

after  the  call  to  arms  had  been  given,  found 
it  necessary  to  explain  himself  to  every 
woman  of  his  acquaintance,  and  no  explana 
tion  was  sufficient  to  shield  him  from  the 
social  ostracism  consequent  upon  any  long- 
tarrying.  Throughout  the  war  it  was  the 
same,  and  when  the  war  ended  the  men 
who  lived  to  return  were  greeted  with  sad 
faces  by  those  who  had  cheerfully  and  even 
joyously  sent  them  forth  to  the  battle. 

Under  these  circumstances,  the  reader 
will  readily  understand,  the  first  call  for 
troops  took  nearly  all  the  men  of  Virginia 
away  from  their  homes.  Even  the  boys  in 
the  colleges  and  schools  enlisted,  and  these 
establishments  were  forced  to  suspend  for 
want  of  students.  In  one  college  the  pres 
ident  organized  the  students,  and  making 
himself  their  commander,  led  them  directly 
from  the  class-room  to  the  field.  So  strong 
and  all-embracing  was  the  thought  that 
every  man  owed  it  to  the  community  to 
become  a  soldier,  that  even  clergymen  went 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    49 

into  the  army  by  the  score,  and  large  dis 
tricts  of  country  were  left  too  without  a 
physician,  until  the  people  could  secure,  by 
means  of  a  memorial,  the  unanimous  vote 
of  the  company  to  which  some  favorite 
physician  belonged,  declaring  it  to  be  his 
patriotic  duty  to  remain  at  home.  Without 
such  an  instruction  from  his  comrades  no 
physician  would  consent  to  withdraw,  and 
even  with  it  very  many  of  them  preferred 
to  serve  in  the  ranks. 

These  were  the  men  of  whom  the  Con 
federate  army  was  for  the  first  year  or  two 
chiefly  composed.  After  that  the  conscrip 
tion  brought  in  a  good  deal  of  material 
which  was  worse  than  useless.  There  were 
some  excellent  soldiers  who  came  into  the 
army  as  conscripts,  but  they  were  excep 
tions  to  the  rule.  For  the  most  part  the 
men  whose  bodies  were  thus  lugged  in  by 
force  had  no  spirits  to  bring  with  them. 
They  had  already  lived  a  long  time  under 
all  the  contumely  which  a  reputation  for 

4 


50         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

confessed  cowardice  could  bring  upon  them. 
The  verdict  of  their  neighbors  was  already 
pronounced,  and  they  could  not  possiWy 
change  it  now  by  good  conduct.  They 
brought  discontent  with  them  into  the 
camp,  and  were  sullenly  worthless  as  sol 
diers  throughout.  They  were  a  leaven  of 
demoralization  which  the  army  would  have 
been  better  without.  But  they  were  com 
paratively  few  in  number,  and  as  the  char 
acter  of  the  army  was  crystallized  long  be 
fore  these  men  came  into  it  at  all,  they  had 
little  influence  in  determining  the  conduct 
of  the  whole.  If  they  added  nothing  to  our 
strength,  they  could  do  little  to  weaken  us, 
and  in  any  estimate  of  the  character  of 
the  Confederate  army  they  hardly  count  at 
all.  The  men  who  early  in  the  war  strug 
gled  for  a  place  in  the  front  rank,  whenever 
there  was  chance  of  a  fight,  and  thought 
themselves  unlucky  if  they  failed  to  get  it, 
are  the  men  who  gave  character  afterwards 
to  the  well-organized  and  well-disciplined 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    51 

army  which  so  long  contested  the  ground 
before  Richmond.  They  did  become  sol 
diers  after  a  while,  well  regulated  and  thor 
oughly  effective.  The  process  of  disciplin 
ing  them  took  away  none  of  their  personal 
spirit  or  their  personal  interest  in  the  war, 
but  it  taught  them  the  value  of  unquestion 
ing  obedience,  and  the  virtue  there  was  in 
yielding  it.  I  remember  very  well  the  ex 
treme  coolness  with  which,  in  one  of  the 
valley  skirmishes,  a  few  days  before  the 
first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  a  gentleman  private 
in  my  own  company  rode  out  of  the  ranks 
for  the  purpose  of  suggesting  to  J.  E.  B. 
Stuart  the  propriety  of  charging  a  gun 
which  was  shelling  us,  and  which  seemed 
nearer  to  us  than  to  its  supporting  infantry. 
I  heard  another  gentleman  without  rank, 
who  had  brought  a  dispatch  to  Stonewall 
Jackson,  request  that  officer  to  "  cut  the 
answer  short,"  on  the  ground  that  his  horse 
was  a  little  lame  and  he  feared  his  inability 
to  deliver  it  as  promptly  as  was  desirable 


52         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

These  men  and  their  comrades  lost  none  of 
this  personal  solicitude  for  the  proper  con 
duct  of  the  war,  in  process  of  becoming 
soldiers,  but  they  learned  not  to  question  or 
advise,  when  their  duty  was  to  listen  and 
obey.  Their  very  errors,  as  General  Stu 
art  once  said  in  my  hearing,  proved  them 
the  best  of  material  out  of  which  to  make 
soldiers.  "  They  are  pretty  good  officers 
now,"  he  said,  "  and  after  a  while  they  will 
make  excellent  soldiers  too.  They  only 
need  reducing  to  the  ranks? 

This  personal  interest  in  the  war,  which 
in  their  undisciplined  beginning  led  them 
into  indiscreet  meddling  with  details  of 
policy  belonging  to  their  superiors,  served 
to  sustain  them  when  as  disciplined  soldiers 
they  were  called  upon  to  bear  a  degree  of 
hardship  of  which  they  had  never  dreamed. 
They  learned  to  trust  the  management  of 
affairs  to  the  officers,  asking  no  questions, 
but  finding  their  own  greatest  usefulness 
in  cheerful  and  ready  obedience.  The  wish 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    53 

to  help,  which  made  them  unsoldierly  at 
first,  served  to  make  them  especially  good 
soldiers  when  it  was  duly  tempered  with 
discipline  and  directed  by  experience.  The 
result  was  that  even  in  the  darkest  days 
of  the  struggle,  when  these  soldiers  knew 
they  were  losing  everything  but  their  honor, 
when  desperation  led  them  to  think  of  a 
thousand  expedients  and  to  see  every  blun 
der  that  was  made,  they  waited  patiently 
for  the  word  of  command,  and  obeyed  it 
with  alacrity  and  cheerfulness  when  it  came, 
however  absurd  it  might  seem.  I  remem 
ber  an  incident  which  will  serve  to  illustrate 
this.  The  Federal  forces  one  day  captured 
an  important  fort  on  the  north  side  of 
James  River,  which  had  been  left  almost 
unguarded,  through  the  blundering  of  the 
officer  charged  with  its  defense.  It  must 
be  retaken,  or  the  entire  line  in  that  place 
must  be  abandoned,  and  a  new  one  built,  at 
great  risk  of  losing  Richmond.  Two  bodies 
of  infantry  were  ordered  to  charge  it  on 


54         ^  Rebel's  Recollections. 

different  sides,  while  the  command  to  which 
I  was  then  attached  should  shell  it  vigor 
ously  with  mortars.  In  order  that  the  at 
tack  might  be  simultaneously  made  on  the 
two  sides,  a  specific  time  was  set  for  it,  but 
for  some  unexplained  reason  there  was  a 
misunderstanding  between  the  two  com 
manders.  The  one  on  the  farther  side  be 
gan  the  attack  twenty  minutes  too  soon. 
Every  man  of  the  other  body,  which  lay 
there  by  our  still  silent  mortars,  knew  per 
fectly  well  that  the  attack  had  begun,  and 
that  they  ought  to  strike  then  if  at  all. 
They  knew  that,  without  their  aid  and  that 
of  the  mortars,  their  friends  would  be  re 
pulsed,  and  that  a  like  result  would  follow 
their  own  assault  when  it  should  be  made, 
twenty  minutes  later.  They  remained  as 
they  were,  however,  hearing  the  rattle  of 
the  musketry  and  listening  with  calm  faces 
to  the  exulting  cheers  of  the  victorious 
enemy.  Then  came  their  own  time,  and 
knowing  perfectly  well  that  their  assault 


The  Men  who  Made  the  Army.    55 

ivas  now  a  useless  waste  of  life,  they  obeyed 
the  order  as  it  had  been  delivered  to  them, 
and  knocked  at  the  very  gates  of  that  for 
tress  for  an  hour.  These  men,  in  1861, 
would  have  clamored  for  immediate  attack 
as  the  only  hope  of  accomplishing  anything, 
and  had  their  commander  insisted,  in  such 
a  case,  upon  obeying  orders,  they  would  in 
all  probability  have  charged  without  him. 
In  1864,  having  become  soldiers,  they 
obeyed  orders  even  at  cost  of  failure.  They 
had  reduced  themselves  to  the  ranks  — 
that  was  all 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   TEMPER   OF   THE    WOMEN. 

DURING  the  latter  part  of  the  year  in 
which  the  war  between  the  States  came  to 
an  end,  a  Southern  comic  writer,  in  a  letter 
addressed  to  Artemus  Ward,  summed  up 
the  political  outlook  in  one  sentence,  read 
ing  somewhat  as  follows  ;  "  You  may  recon 
struct  the  men,  with  your  laws  and  things, 
but  how  are  you  going  to  reconstruct  the 
women  ?  Whoop-ee  !  "  Now  this  unauthor 
ized  but  certainly  very  expressive  interjec 
tion  had  a  deal  of  truth  at  its  back,  and  I 
am  very  sure  that  I  have  never  yet  known 
a  thoroughly  "  reconstructed  "  woman.  The 
reason,  of  course,  is  not  far  to  seek.  The 
women  of  the  South  could  hardly  have 
been  more  desperately  in  earnest  than  their 
husbands  and  brothers  and  sons  were, 


The  Temper  of  the   Women.     57 

in  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  but  with 
their  woman-natures  they  gave  themselves 
wholly  to  the  cause,  and  having  loved  it 
heartily  when  it  gave  promise  of  a  sturdy 
life,  they  almost  worship  it  now  that  they 
have  strewn  its  bier  with  funeral  flowers. 
To  doubt  its  righteousness,  or  to  falter  in 
their  loyalty  to  it  while  it  lived,  would  have 
been  treason  and  infidelity  ;  to  do  the  like 
now  that  it  is  dead  would  be  to  them  little 
less  than  sacrilege. 

I  wish  I  could  adequately  tell  my  reader 
of  the  part  those  women  played  in  the  war. 
If  I  could  make  these  pages  show  the  half 
of  their  nobleness  ;  if  I  could  describe  the 
sufferings  they  endured,  and  tell  of  their 
cheerfulness  under  it  all ;  if  the  reader 
might  guess  the  utter  unselfishness  with 
which  they  laid  themselves  and  the  things 
they  held  nearest  their  hearts  upon  the 
altar  of  the  only  country  they  knew  as  their 
own,  the  rare  heroism  with  which  they 
played  their  sorrowful  part  in  a  drama  which 


58         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

was  to  them  a  long  tragedy ;  if  my  pages 
could  be  made  to  show  the  half  of  these 
things,  all  womankind,  I  arn  sure,  would 
tenderly  cherish  the  record,  and  nobody 
would  wonder  again  at  the  tenacity  with 
which  the  women  of  the  South  still  hold 
their  allegiance  to  the  lost  cause. 

Theirs  was  a  peculiarly  hard  lot.  The 
real  sorrows  of  war,  like  those  of  drunken 
ness,  always  fall  most  heavily  upon  womea 
They  may  not  bear  arms.  They  may  not 
even  share  the  triumphs  which  compensate 
their  brethren  for  toil  and  suffering  and 
danger.  They  must  sit  still  and  endure. 
The  poverty  which  war  brings  to  them 
wears  no  cheerful  face,  but  sits  down  with 
them  to  empty  tables  and  pinches  them 
sorely  in  solitude. 

After  the  victory,  the  men  who  have  won 
it  throw  up  their  hats  in  a  glad  huzza,  while 
their  wives  and  daughters  await  in  sorest 
agony  of  suspense  the  news  which  may 
bring  hopeless  desolation  to  their  hearts 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     59 

To  them  the  victory  may  mean  the  loss  of 
those  for  whom  they  lived  and  in  whom 
they  hoped,  while  to  those  who  have  fought 
the  battle  it  brings  only  gladness.  And 
a"  this  was  true  of  Southern  women  almost 
without  exception.  The  fact  that  all  the 
men  capable  of  bearing  arms  went  into  the 
army,  and  stayed  there,  gave  to  every 
woman  in  the  South  a  personal  interest  not 
only  in  the  general  result  of  each  battle,  but 
in  the  list  of  killed  and  wounded  as  well. 
Poverty,  too,  and  privation  of  the  sorest 
kind,  was  the  common  lot,  while  the  absence 
of  the  men  laid  many  heavy  burdens  of  work 
and  responsibility  upon  shoulders  unused  to 
either.  But  they  bore  it  all,  not  cheerfully 
only,  but  gladly.  They  believed  it  to  be 
the  duty  of  every  able-bodied  man  to  serve 
in  the  army,  and  they  eagerly  sent  the  men 
of  their  own  homes  to  the  field,  frowning 
undisguisedly  upon  every  laggard  until 
there  were  no  laggards  left.  And  their 
spirit  knew  no  change  as  the  war  went  oa 


60         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

Their  idea  of  men's  duty  comprehended 
nothing  less  than  persistence  as  long  as  a 
shot  could  be  fired.  When  they  saw  that 
the  end  was  not  to  be  victory,  but  defeat, 
that  fact  made  no  change  whatever  in  their 
view  of  the  duty  to  be  done.  Still  less  did 
their  own  privations  and  labors  and  suffer 
ings  tend  to  dampen  their  ardor.  On  the 
contrary,  the  more  heavily  the  war  bore 
upon  themselves,  the  more  persistently  did 
they  demand  that  it  should  be  fought  out 
to  the  end.  When  they  lost  a  husband,  a 
son,  or  a  brother,  they  held  the  loss  only  an 
additional  reason  for  faithful  adherence  to 
the  cause.  Having  made  such  a  sacrifice 
to  that  which  was  almost  a  religion  to  them, 
they  had,  if  possible,  less  thought  than  ever 
of  proving  unfaithful  to  it. 

I  put  these  general  statements  first,  so 
that  the  reader  who  shall  be  interested  in 
such  anecdotes  as  I  shall  have  to  tell  may 
not  be  misled  thereby  into  the  thought  that 
these  good  women  were  implacable  or  vin- 


The  Temper  of  the   Women.     61 

dictive,  when  they  were  only  devoted  to  a 
cause  which  in  their  eyes  represented  the 
sum  of  all  righteousness. 

I  remember  a  conversation  between  two 
of  them,  —  one  a  young  wife  whose  hus 
band  was  in  the  army,  and  the  other  an 
elderly  lady,  with  no  husband  or  son,  but 
with  many  friends  and  near  relatives  in 
marching  regiments.  The  younger  lady 
remarked,  — 

"  I  'm  sure  I  do  not  hate  our  enemies.  I 
earnestly  hope  their  souls  may  go  to  heaven, 
but  I  would  like  to  blow  all  their  mortal 
bodies  away,  as  fast  as  they  come  upon  our 
soil." 

"  Why,  you  shock  me,  my  dear,"  replied 
the  other ;  "  I  don't  see  why  you  want  the 
Yankees  to  go  to  heaven !  I  hope  to  get 
there  myself  some  day,  and  I'm  sure  I 
should  n't  want  to  go  if  I  thought  I  should 
find  any  of  them  there." 

This  old  lady  was  convinced  from  the 
first  that  the  South  would  fail,  and  she 


62          A    Rebel's  Recollections. 

Dased  this  belief  upon  the  fact  that  we 
had  permitted  Yankees  to  build  railroads 
through  the  Southern  States.  "  I  tell  you/' 
she  would  say,  "  that 's  what  they  built  the 
railroads  for.  They  knew  the  war  was 
coming,  and  they  got  ready  for  it.  The 
railroads  will  whip  us,  you  may  depend. 
What  else  were  they  made  for  ?  We  got 
on  well  enough  without  them,  and  we 
ought  n't  to  have  let  anybody  build  them." 
And  no  amount  of  reasoning  would  serve 
to  shake  her  conviction  that  the  people  of 
the  North  had  built  all  our  railroads  with 
treacherous  intent,  though  the  stock  of  the 
only  road  she  had  ever  seen  was  held  very 
largely  by  the  people  along  its  line,  many 
of  whom  were  her  own  friends. 

She  always  insisted,  too,  that  the  North 
ern  troops  came  South  and  made  war  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  taking  possession  of  our 
lands  and  negroes,  and  she  was  astonished 
almost  out  of  her  wits  when  she  learned 
that  the  negroes  were  free.  She  had  sup- 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     63 

posed  that  they  were  simply  to  change 
masters,  and  even  then  she  lived  for  months 
in  daily  anticipation  of  the  coming  of  "  the 
new  land  owners,"  who  were  waiting,  she 
supposed,  for  assignments  of  plantations  to 
be  made  to  them  by  military  authority. 

"  They  '11  quarrel  about  the  division,  may 
be,"  she  said  one  day,  "  and  then  there  '11 
be  a  chance  for  us  to  whip  them  again,  I 
hope."  The  last  time  I  saw  her,  she  had 
not  yet  become  convinced  that  title-deeds 
were  still  to  be  respected. 

A  young  girl,  ordinarily  of  a  very  gentle 
disposition,  astonished  a  Federal  colonel 
one  day  by  an  outburst  of  temper  which 
served  at  least  to  show  the  earnestness  of 
her  purpose  to  uphold  her  side  of  the  argu 
ment.  She  lived  in  a  part  of  the  country 
then  for  the  first  time  held  by  the  Federal 
army,  and  a  colonel,  with  some  members  of 
his  staff,  made  her  family  the  unwilling 
recipients  of  a  call  one  morning.  Seeing 
fhe  piano  open,  the  colonel  asked  the  young 


64         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

lady  to  play,  but  she  declined.  He  then 
went  to  the  instrument  himself,  but  he 
had  hardly  begun  to  play  when  the  damsel, 
raising  the  piano  top,  severed  nearly  all  the 
strings  with  a  hatchet,  saying  to  the  aston 
ished  performer,  as  she  did  so,  - 

"  That 's  my  piano,  and  it  shall  not  give 
you  a  minute's  pleasure."  The  colonel 
bowed,  apologized,  and  replied,  — 

"  If  all  your  people  are  as  ready  as  you 
to  make  costly  sacrifices,  we  might  as  well 
go  home." 

And  most  of  them  were  ready  and  will 
ing  to  make  similar  sacrifices.  One  lady 
of  my  acquaintance  knocked  in  the  heads 
of  a  dozen  casks  of  choice  wine  rather  than 
allow  some  Federal  officers  to  sip  as  many 
glasses  of  it.  Another  destroyed  her  own 
library,  which  was  very  precious  to  her, 
when  that  seemed  the  only  way  in  which 
she  could  prevent  the  staff  of  a  general 
officer,  camped  near  her,  from  enjoying  a 
few  hours'  reading  in  her  parlor  every  morn 
ing. 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     65 

In  New  Orleans,  soon  after  the  war,  1 
saw  in  a  drawing-room,  one  day,  an  elabo 
rately  framed  letter,  of  "which,  the  curtains 
being  drawn,  I  could  read  only  the  signa 
ture,  which  to  my  astonishment  was  that 
of  General  Butler. 

"  What  is  that  ? "  I  asked  of  the  young 
gentlewoman  I  was  visiting. 

"  Oh,  that 's  my  diploma,  my  certificate 
of  good  behavior,  from  General  Butler  ;  " 
and  taking  it  down  from  the  wall,  she  per 
mitted  me  to  read  it,  telling  me  at  the 
same  time  its  history.  It  seems  that  the 
young  lady  had  been  very  active  in  aiding 
captured  Confederates  to  escape  from  New 
Orleans,  and  for  this  and  other  similar  of 
fenses  she  was  arrested  several  times.  A 
gentleman  who  knew  General  Butler  per 
sonally  had  interested  himself  in  behalf  of 
tier  and  some  of  her  friends,  and  upon 
making  an  appeal  for  their  discharge  re 
ceived  this  personal  note  from  the  com 
manding  general,  in  which  he  declared  his 
5 


66         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

willingness  to  discharge  all  the  others, 
"  But  that  black-eyed  Miss  B.,"  he  wrote, 
"  seems  to  me  an  incorrigible  little  devil 
whom  even  prison  fare  won't  tame."  The 
young  lady  had  framed  the  note,  and  she 
cherishes  it  yet,  doubtless. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  General  Forrest, 
which  will  serve  to  show  his  opinion  of  the 
pluck  and  devotion  of  the  Southern  women. 
He  was  drawing  his  men  up  in  line  of 
battle  one  day,  and  it  was  evident  that  a 
sharp  encounter  was  about  to  take  place. 
Some  ladies  ran  from  a  house,  which  hap 
pened  to  stand  just  in  front  of  his  line,  and 
asked  him  anxiously,— 

"What  shall  we  do,  general,  what  shall 
we  do  ? " 

Strong  in  his  faith  that  they  only  wished 
to  help  in  some  way,  he  replied,  — 

"  I  really  don't  see  that  you  can  do  much, 
except  to  stand  on  stumps,  wave  your  bon 
nets,  and  shout  '  Hurrah,  boys  ! ' ' 

In  Richmond,  when  the   hospitals  were 


TJte   Temper  of  the   Women.     67 

filled  with  wounded  men  brought  in  from 
the  seven  days'  fighting  with  McClellan, 
and  the  surgeons  found  it  impossible  to 
dress  half  the  wounds,  a  band  was  formed, 
consisting  of  nearly  all  the  married  women 
of  the  city,  who  took  upon  themselves  the 
duty  of  going  to  the  hospitals  and  dressing 
wounds  from  morning  till  night ;  and  they 
persisted  in  their  painful  duty  until  every 
man  was  cared  for,  saving  hundreds  of  lives, 
as  the  surgeons  unanimously  testified. 
When  nitre  was  found  to  be  growing  scarce, 
and  the  supply  of  gunpowder  was  conse 
quently  about  to  give  out,  women  all  over 
the  land  dug  up  the  earth  in  their  smoke 
houses  and  tobacco  barns,  and  with  their 
own  hands  faithfully  extracted  the  desired 
salt,  for  use  in  the  government  laboratories. 
Many  of  them  denied  themselves  not 
only  delicacies,  but  substantial  food  also, 
when  by  enduring  semi-starvation  they 
could  add  to  the  stock  of  food  at  the  com 
mand  of  the  subsistence  officers.  I  myself 


68         A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

knew  more  than  one  houseful  of  women, 
who,  from  the  moment  that  food  began  to 
grow  scarce,  refused  to  eat  meat  or  drink 
coffee,  living  thenceforth  only  upon  vege 
tables  of  a  speedily  perishable  sort,  in  order 
that  they  might  leave  the  more  for  the  sol 
diers  in  the  field.  When  a  friend  remon 
strated  with  one  of  them,  on  the  ground 
that  her  health,  already  frail,  was  breaking 
down  utterly  for  want  of  proper  diet,  she 
replied,  in  a  quiet,  determined  way,  "  I 
know  that  very  well  ;  but  it  is  little  that  I 
can  do,  and  I  must  do  that  little  at  any 
cost.  My  health  and  my  life  are  worth  less 
than  those  of  my  brothers,  and  if  they  give 
theirs  to  the  cause,  why  should  not  I  do  the 
same  ?  I  would  starve  to  death  cheerfully 
if  I  could  feed  one  soldier  more  by  doing  so, 
but  the  things  I  eat  can't  be  sent  to  camp. 
I  think  it  a  sin  to  eat  anything  that  can  be 
used  for  rations."  And  she  meant  what 
she  said,  too,  as  a  little  mound  in  the 
church-yard  testifies. 


The   Temper  of  the    Women.     69 

Every  Confederate  remembers  gratefully 
the  reception  given  him  when  he  went  into 
any  house  where  these  women  were.  Who 
ever  he  might  be,  and  whatever  his  plight, 
if  he  wore  the  gray,  he  was  received,  not  as 
a  beggar  or  tramp,  not  even  as  a  stranger, 
but  as  a  son  of  the  house,  for  whom  it  held 
nothing  too  good,  and  whose  comfort  was 
the  one  care  of  all  its  inmates,  even  though 
their  own  must  be  sacrificed  in  securing  it. 
When  the  hospitals  were  crowded,  the  peo 
ple  earnestly  besought  permission  to  take 
the  men  to  their  houses  and  to  care  for 
them  there,  and  for  many  months  almost 
every  house  within  a  hundred  miles  of 
Richmond  held  one  or  more  wounded  men 
as  especially  honored  guests. 

"  God  bless  these  Virginia  women  !  "  said 
a  general  officer  from  one  of  the  cotton 
States,  one  day,  "  they  're  worth  a  regiment 
apiece  ; "  and  he  spoke  the  thought  of  the 
army,  except  that  their  blessing  covered  the 
whole  country  as  well  as  Virginia. 


jo         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

The  ingenuity  with  which  these  good 
ladies  discovered  or  manufactured  onerous 
duties  for  themselves  was  surprising,  and 
having  discovered  or  imagined  some  new 
duty  they  straightway  proceeded  to  do  it  at 
any  cost.  An  excellent  Richmond  dame 
was  talking  with  a  soldier  friend,  when  he 
carelessly  remarked  that  there  was  nothing 
which  so  greatly  helped  to  keep  up  a  con 
tented  and  cheerful  spirit  among  the  men 
as  the  receipt  of  letters  from  their  woman 
friends.  Catching  at  the  suggestion  as  a 
revelation  of  duty,  she  asked,  "And  cheei- 
fulness  makes  better  soldiers  of  the  men, 
does  it  not  ? "  Receiving  yes  for  an  an 
swer,  the  frail  little  woman,  already  over 
burdened  with  cares  of  an  unusual  sort,  sat 
down  and  made  out  a  list  of  all  the  men 
with  whom  she  was  acquainted  even  in  the 
smallest  possible  way,  and  from  that  day 
until  the  end  of  the  war  she  wrote  one  let 
ter  a  week  to  each,  a  task  which,  as  her  ac 
quaintance  was  large,  taxed  her  time  and 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     71 

strength  very  severely.  Not  content  with 
this,  she  wrote  on  the  subject  in  the  news 
papers,  earnestly  urging  a  like  course  upon 
her  sisters,  many  of  whom  adopted  the  sug 
gestion  at  once,  much  to  the  delight  of  the 
soldiers,  who  little  dreamed  that  the  kindly, 
cheerful,  friendly  letters  which  every  mail 
brought  into  camp,  were  a  part  of  woman's 
self-appointed  work  for  the  success  of  the 
common  cause.  From  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  the  war  it  was  the  same.  No 
cry  of  pain  escaped  woman's  lips  at  the 
parting  which  sent  the  men  into  camp  ;  no 
word  of  despondency  was  spoken  when 
hope  seemed  most  surely  dead  ;  no  com 
plaint  from  the  women  ever  reminded  their 
soldier  husbands  and  sons  and  brothers 
that  there  was  hardship  and  privation  and 
terror  at  home.  They  bore  all  with  brave 
hearts  and  cheerful  faces,  and  even  vhen 
they  mourned  the  death  of  their  most  ten 
derly  loved  ones,  they  comforted  them 
selves  with  the  thought  that  they  buried 
only  heroic  dust. 


72          A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

"  It  is  the  death  I  would  have  chosen  foi 
iiim,"  wrote  the  widow  of  a  friend  whose 
loss  I  had  announced  to  her.  "  I  loved  him 
for  his  manliness,  and  now  that  he  has 
shown  that  manliness  by  dying  as  a  hero 
dies,  I  mourn,  but  am  not  heart-broken.  I 
know  that  a  brave  man  awaits  me  whither 
I  am  going." 

They  carried  their  efforts  to  cheer  and 
help  the  troops  into  every  act  of  their 
lives.  When  they  could,  they  visited  camp. 
Along  the  lines  of  march  they  came  out 
with  water  or  coffee  or  tea,  —  the  best  they 
had,  whatever  it  might  be,  —  with  flowers, 
or  garlands  of  green  when  their  flowers 
were  gone.  A  bevy  of  girls  stood  under  a 
sharp  fire  from  the  enemy's  lines  at  Peters 
burg  one  day,  while  they  sang  Bayard  Tay 
lor's  Song  of  the  Camp,  responding  to  an 
sncore  with  the  stanza  :  — 

"  Ah!  soldiers,  to  your  honored  rest, 

Your  truth  and  valor  bearing, 
The  bravest  are  the  tenderest, 
The  loving  are  the  daring  !  " 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     73 

Indeed,  the  coolness  of  women  under  fire 
was  always  a  matter  of  surprise  to  me.  A 
young  girl,  not  more  than  sixteen  years  of 
age,  acted  as  guide  to  a  scouting  party  dur 
ing  the  early  years  of  the  war,  and  when 
we  urged  her  to  go  back  after  the  enemy 
had  opened  a  vigorous  fire  upon  us,  she 
declined,  on  the  plea  that  she  believed  we 
were  "  going  to  charge  those  fellows,"  and 
she  "wanted  to  see  the  fun."  At  Peters 
burg  women  did  their  shopping  and  went 
about  their  duties  under  a  most  uncom 
fortable  bombardment,  without  evincing  the 
slightest  fear  or  showing  any  nervousness 
whatever. 

But  if  the  cheerfulness  of  the  women  dur 
ing  the  war  was  remarkable,  what  shall  we 
say  of  the  way  in  which  they  met  its  final 
failure  and  the  poverty  that  came  with  it  ? 
The  end  of  the  war  completed  the  ruin 
which  its  progress  had  wrought.  Womer. 
who  had  always  lived  in  luxury,  and  whose 
labors  and  sufferings  during  the  war  were 


74         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

lightened  by  the  consciousness  that  in  suf« 
fering  and  laboring  they  were  doing  their 
part  toward  the  accomplishment  of  the  end 
upon  which  all  hearts  were  set,  were  now 
compelled  to  face  not  temporary  but  per 
manent  poverty,  and  to  endure,  without  a 
motive  or  a  sustaining  purpose,  still  sorer 
privations  than  any  they  had  known  in  the 
past.  The  country  was  exhausted,  and  no 
body  could  foresee  any  future  but  one  of 
abject  wretchedness.  It  was  seed-time,  but 
the  suddenly  freed  negroes  had  not  yet 
learned  that  freedom  meant  aught  else  than 
idleness,  and  the  spring  was  gone  before 
anything  like  a  reorganization  of  the  labor 
system  could  be  effected.  The  men  might 
emigrate  when  they  should  get  home,  but 
the  case  of  the  women  was  a  very  sorry 
one  indeed.  They  kept  their  spirits  up 
through  it  all,  however,  and  improvised  a 
new  social  system  in  which  absolute  pov 
erty,  cheerfully  borne,  was  the  badge  of  re- 


The   Temper  of  the   Women.     75 

spectability.  Everybody  was  poor  except 
the  speculators  who  had  fattened  upon  the 
necessities  of  the  women  and  children,  and 
so  poverty  was  essential  to  anything  like 
good  repute.  The  return  of  the  soldiers 
made  some  sort  of  social  festivity  neces 
sary,  and  "  starvation  parties  "  were  given, 
at  which  it  was  understood  that  the  givers 
were  wholly  unable  to  set  out  refreshments 
of  any  kind.  In  the  matter  of  dress,  too, 
the  general  poverty  was  recognized,  and 
every  one  went  clad  in  whatever  he  or  she 
happened  to  have.  The  want  of  means 
became  a  jest,  and  nobody  mourned  over 
it  ;  while  all  were  laboring  to  repair  their 
wasted  fortunes  as  they  best  could.  And 
all  this  was  due  solely  to  the  unconquer 
able  cheerfulness  of  the  Southern  women. 
The  men  came  home  moody,  worn  out, 
discouraged,  and  but  for  the  influence  of 
woman's  cheerfulness,  the  Southern  States 
might  have  fallen  into  a  lethargy  from 


7 6         A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

which  they  could   not   have  recovered  for 
generations. 

Such  prosperity  as  they  have  since 
achieved  is  largely  due  to  the  courage  and 
spirit  of  their  noble  women. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

OF   THE    TIME    WHEN    MONEY   WAS    "  EASY." 

IT  seems  a  remarkable  fact  that  during 
the  late  Congressional  travail  with  the  cur 
rency  question,  no  one  of  the  people  in  or 
out  of  Congress,  who  were  concerned  lest 
there  should  not  be  enough  money  in  the 
country  to  "  move  the  crops,"  ever  took 
upon  himself  the  pleasing  task  of  rehears 
ing  the  late  Confederacy's  financial  story, 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  by  example  how 
simple  and  easy  a  thing  it  is  to  create 
wealth  out  of  nothing  by  magic  revolutions 
of  the  printing-press,  and  to  make  rich,  by 
act  of  Congress,  everybody  not  too  lazy  to 
gather  free  dollars  into  a  pile.  The  story 
has  all  the  flavor  of  the  Princess  Schehere- 
zacle's  romances,  with  the  additional  merit 
of  being  historically  true.  For  once  a  whole 


78         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

people  was  rich.  Money  was  "  easy  "  enough 
to  satisfy  everybody,  and  everybody  had  it 
in  unstinted  measure.  This  money  was  not, 
it  is  true,  of  a  quality  to  piease  the  believers 
in  a  gold  or  other  arbitrary  standard  of 
value,  but  that  is  a  matter  of  little  conse 
quence,  now  that  senators  and  representa 
tives  of  high  repute  have  shown  that  the 
best  currency  possible  is  that  which  exists 
only  by  the  will  of  the  government,  and  the 
volume  of  which  is  regulated  by  the  crav 
ings  of  the  people  alone.  That  so  apt  an 
illustration  of  the  financial  views  of  the  ma 
jority  in  Congress  should  have  been  wholly 
neglected,  during  the  discussions,  seems 
therefore  unaccountable. 

The  financial  system  adopted  by  the  Con 
federate  government  was  singularly  simple 
and  free  from  technicalities.  It  consisted 
chiefly  in  the  issue  of  treasury  notes  enough 
to  meet  all  the  expenses  of  the  government, 
and  in  the  present  advanced  state  of  the  art 
of  printing  there  was  but  one  difficulty  in- 


When  Money  was  "  Easy."       79 

cident  to  this  process  ;  namely,  the  impos 
sibility  of  having  the  notes  signed  in  the 
Treasury  Department,  as  fast  as  they  were 
needed.  There  happened,  however,  to  be 
several  thousand  young  ladies  in  Richmond 
willing  to  accept  light  and  remunerative 
employment  at  their  homes,  and  as  it  was 
really  a  matter  of  small  moment  whose 
name  the  notes  bore,  they  were  given  out 
in  sheets  to  these  young  ladies,  who  signed 
and  returned  them  for  a  consideration.  I 
shall  not  undertake  to  guess  how  many 
Confederate  treasury  notes  were  issued. 
Indeed,  I  am  credibly  informed  by  a  gen 
tleman  who  was  high  in  office  in  the  Treas 
ury  Department,  that  even  the  secretary 
himself  did  not  certainly  know.  The  acts 
of  Congress  authorizing  issues  of  currency 
were  the  hastily  formulated  thought  of  a 
not  very  wise  body  of  men,  and  my  inform 
ant  tells  me  they  were  frequently  suscepti 
ble  of  widely  different  construction  by  dif 
ferent  officials.  However  that  may  be,  it 


8o         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

was  clearly  out  of  the  power  of  the  govern 
ment  ever  to  redeem  the  notes,  and  what 
ever  may  have  been  the  state  of  affairs 
within  the  treasury,  nobody  outside  its  pre 
cincts  ever  cared  to  muddle  his  head  in  an 
attempt  to  get  at  exact  figures. 

We  knew  only  that  money  was  astonish 
ingly  abundant.  Provisions  fell  short  some 
times,  and  the  supply  of  clothing  was  not 
always  as  large  as  we  should  have  liked, 
but  nobody  found  it  difficult  to  get  money 
enough.  It  was  to  be  had  almost  for  the 
asking.  And  to  some  extent  the  abun 
dance  of  the  currency  really  seemed  to 
atone  for  its  extreme  badness.  Going  the 
rounds  of  the  pickets  on  the  coast  of  South 
Carolina,  one  day,  in  1863,  I  heard  a  con 
versation  between  a  Confederate  and  a 
Union  soldier,  stationed  on  opposite  sides 
of  a  little  inlet,  in  the  course  of  which  this 
point  was  brought  out. 

Union  Soldier.  Are  n't  times  rather  hard 
over  there,  Johnny  ? 


When  Money  was  "Easy"'       81 

Confederate  Soldier.  Not  at  all.  We  Ve 
all  the  necessaries  of  life. 

U.  S.  Yes ;  but  how  about  luxuries  ? 
You  never  see  any  coffee  nowadays,  do 
you  ? 

C.  S.     Plenty  of  it. 

U.  S.     Is  n't  it  pretty  high  ? 

C.  S.     Forty  dollars  a  pound,  that 's  all. 

U.  S.  Whew !  Don't  you  call  that 
high  ? 

C.  S.  (after  reflecting).  Well,  perhaps 
it  is  a  trifle  uppish,  but  then  you  never  saw 
money  so  plentiful  as  it  is  with  us.  We 
hardly  know  what  to  do  with  it,  and  don't 
mind  paying  high  prices  for  things  we 
want. 

And  that  was  the  universal  feeling. 
Money  was  so  easily  got,  and  its  value  was 
so  utterly  uncertain,  that  we  were  never 
able  to  determine  what  was  a  fair  price  for 
anything.  We  fell  into  the  habit  of  paying 
whatever  was  asked,  knowing  that  to-mor 
row  we  should  have  to  pay  more.  Specu- 
6 


82         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

lation  became  the  easiest  and  surest  thing 
imaginable.  The  speculator  saw  no  risks 
of  loss.  Every  article  of  merchandise  rose 
in  value  every  day,  and  to  buy  anything 
this  week  and  sell  it  next  was  to  make  an 
enormous  profit  quite  as  a  matter  of  course. 
So  uncertain  were  prices,  or  rather  so  con 
stantly  did  they  tend  upward,  that  when  a 
cargo  of  cadet  gray  cloths  was  brought  into 
Charleston  once,  an  officer  in  my  battery, 
attending  the  sale,  was  able  to  secure 
enough  of  the  cloth  to  make  two  suits  of 
clothes,  without  any  expense  whatever, 
merely  by  speculating  upon  an  immediate 
advance.  He  became  the  purchaser,  at 
auction,  of  a  case  of  the  goods,  and  had  no 
difficulty,  as  soon  as  the  sale  was  over,  in 
finding  a  merchant  who  was  glad  to  take 
his  bargain  off  his  hands,  giving  him  the 
cloth  he  wanted  as  a  premium.  The  of 
ficer  could  not  possibly  have  paid  for  the 
case  of  goods,  but  there  was  nothing  surer 
than  that  he  could  sell  again  at  an  advance 


When  Money  was  "  Easy?      83 

the  moment  the  auctioneer's  hammer  fell 
on  the  last  lot  of  cloths. 

Naturally  enough,  speculation  soon  fell 
into  very  bad  repute,  and  the  epithet 
"  speculator "  came  to  be  considered  the 
most  opprobrious  in  the  whole  vocabulary 
of  invective.  The  feeling  was  universal 
that  the  speculators  were  fattening  upon 
the  necessities  of  the  country  and  the  suf 
ferings  of  the  people.  Nearly  all  mercan 
tile  business  was  regarded  at  least  with 
suspicion,  and  much  of  it  fell  into  the  hands 
of  people  with  no  reputations  to  lose,  a  fact 
which  certainly  did  not  tend  to  relieve  the 
community  in  the  matter  of  high  prices. 

The  prices  which  obtained  were  almost 
fabulous,  and  singularly  enough  there 
seemed  to  be  no  sort  of  ratio  existing  be 
tween  the  values  of  different  articles.  I 
bought  coffee  at  forty  dollars  and  tea  at 
thirty  dollars  a  pound  on  the  same  day. 

My  dinner  at  a  hotel  cost  me  twenty 
dollars,  while  five  dollars  gained  me  a  seat 


84         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

in  the  dress  circle  of  the  theatre.  I  paid 
one  dollar  the  next  morning  for  a  copy  of 
the  Examiner,  but  I  might  have  got  the 
Whig,  Dispatch,  Enquirer,  or  Sentinel,  for 
half  that  sum.  For  some  wretched  tallow 
candles  I  paid  ten  dollars  a  pound.  The 
utter  absence  of  proportion  between  these 
several  prices  is  apparent,  and  I  know  of  no 
way  of  explaining  it  except  upon  the  theory 
that  the  unstable  character  of  the  money 
had  superinduced  a  reckless  disregard  of  all 
value  on  the  part  of  both  buyers  and  sellers. 
A  facetious  friend  used  to  say  prices  were 
so  high  that  nobody  could  see  them,  and 
that  they  "got  mixed  for  want  of  super 
vision."  He  held,  however,  that  the  differ 
ence  between  the  old  and  the  new  order 
of  things  was  a  trifling  one.  "  Before  the 
war,"  he  said,  "  I  went  to  market  with  the 
money  in  my  pocket,  and  brought  back  my 
purchases  in  a  basket ;  now  I  take  the 
money  in  the  basket,  and  bring  the  things 
home  in  my  pocket." 


When  Money  was  "Easy?      85 

As  I  was  returning  to  my  home  after  the 
surrender  at  Appomattox  Court  House,  a 
party  of  us  stopped  at  the  residence  of  a 
planter  for  supper,  and  as  the  country  was 
full  of  marauders  and  horse  thieves,  desert 
ers  from  both  armies,  bent  upon  indiscrimi 
nate  plunder,  our  host  set  a  little  black  boy 
to  watch  our  horses  while  we  ate,  with  in 
structions  to  give  the  alarm  if  anybody 
should  approach.  After  supper  we  dealt 
liberally  with  little  Sam.  Silver  and  gold 
we  had  none,  of  course,  but  Confederate 
money  was  ours  in  great  abundance,  and 
we  bestowed  the  crisp  notes  upon  the 
guardian  of  our  horses,  to  the  extent  of 
several  hundreds  of  dollars.  A  richer  per 
son  than  that  little  negro  I  have  never  seen. 
Money,  even  at  par,  never  carried  more  of 
happiness  with  it  than  did  those  promises 
of  a  dead  government  to  pay.  We  frankly 
told  Sam  that  he  could  buy  nothing  with 
"he  notes,  but  the  information  brought  no 
sadness  to  his  simple  heart. 


86         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

"  I  don'  want  to  buy  nothin',  master,"  he 
replied.  "  I 's  gwine  to  keep  dis  always" 

I  fancy  his  regard  for  the  worthless  pa 
per,  merely  because  it  was  called  money, 
was  closely  akin  to  the  feeling  which  had 
made  it  circulate  among  better-informed 
people  than  he.  Everybody  knew,  long  be 
fore  the  surrender,  that  these  notes  never 
could  be  redeemed.  There  was  little  rea 
son  to  hope,  during  the  last  two  years  of 
the  war,  that  the  "  ratification  of  a  treaty 
of  peace  between  the  Confederate  States 
and  the  United  States,"  on  which  the  pay 
ment  was  conditioned,  would  ever  come. 
We  knew  the  paper  was  worthless,  and  yet 
it  continued  to  circulate.  It  professed  to 
be  money,  and  on  the  strength  of  that  pro 
fession  people  continued  to  take  it  in  pay 
ment  for  goods.  The  amount  of  it  for 
which  the  owner  of  any  article  would  part 
with  his  possession  was  always  uncertain. 
Prices  were  regulated  largely  by  accident, 
were  therefore  wholly  incongruous. 


When  Money  was  "Easy"      87 

But  the  disproportion  between  the  prices 
of  different  articles  was  not  greater  than 
that  between  the  cost  of  goods  imported 
through  the  blockade  and  their  selling 
price.  The  usual  custom  of  blockade-run 
ning  firms  was  to  build  or  buy  a  steamer  in 
Europe,  bring  it  to  Nassau  in  ballast,  and 
load  it  there  with  assorted  merchandise. 
Selling  this  cargo  in  Charleston  or  Wil 
mington  for  Confederate  money,  they  would 
buy  cotton  with  which  to  reload  the  ship 
for  her  outward  voyage.  The  owner  of 
many  of  these  ships  once  told  me  that  if  a 
vessel  which  had  brought  in  one  cargo  were 
lost  with  a  load  of  cotton  on  her  outward 
voyage,  the  owner  would  lose  nothing,  the 
profits  on  the  merchandise  being  fully  equal 
to  the  entire  value  of  ship  and  cotton.  If 
he  could  get  one  cargo  of  merchandise  in, 
and  one  of  cotton  out,  the  loss  of  the  ship 
with  a  second  cargo  of  merchandise  would 
still  leave  him  a  clear  profit  of  more  than  a 
hundred  per  cent,  upon  his  investment 


88         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

And  this  was  due  solely  to  the  abnormal 
state  of  prices  in  the  country,  and  not  at  all 
to  the  management  of  the  blockade-run 
ners.  They  sold  their  cargoes  at  auction, 
and  bought  cotton  in  the  open  market. 

Their  merchandise  brought  fabulous 
prices,  while  cotton,  for  want  of  a  market, 
remained  disproportionately  low.  That  the 
merchants  engaged  in  this  trade  were  in  no 
way  the  authors  of  the  state  of  prices  may 
be  seen  from  two  facts.  First,  if  I  am  cor 
rectly  informed,  they  uniformly  gave  the 
government  an  opportunity  to  take  such 
articles  as  it  had  need  of,  and  especially  all 
the  quinine  imported,  at  the  price  fixed  in 
Richmond,  without  regard  to  the  fact  that 
speculators  would  pay  greatly  more  for  the 
goods.  In  one  case  within  my  own  knowl 
edge  a  heavy  invoice  of  quinine  was  sold  to 
the  government  for  eleven  hundred  dollars 
an  ounce,  when  a  speculator  stood  ready  to 
take  it  at  double  that  price.  Secondly,  the 
cargo  sales  were  peremptory,  and  specu- 


When  Money  was  "  Easy?      89 

lators  sometimes  combined  and  bought  a 
cargo  considerably  below  the  market  price, 
by  appearing  at  the  sale  in  such  numbers 
as  to  exclude  all  other  bidders.  In  one 
case,  I  remember,  the  general  commanding 
at  Charleston  annulled  a  cargo  sale  on  this 
account,  and  sent  some  of  the  speculators 
to  jail  for  the  purpose  of  giving  other  peo 
ple  an  opportunity  to  purchase  needed 
goods  at  prices  very  much  higher  than 
those  forced  upon  the  sellers  by  the  combi 
nation  at  the  first  sale. 

In  the  winter  of  1863-64  Congress  be 
came  aware  of  the  fact  that  prices  were 
higher  than  they  should  be  under  a  sound 
currency.  If  Congress  suspected  this  at 
any  earlier  date,  there  is  nothing  in  the  pro 
ceedings  of  that  body  to  indicate  it.  Now, 
however,  the  newspapers  were  calling  at 
tention  to  an  uncommonly  ugly  phase  of 
the  matter,  and  reminding  Congress  that 
what  the  government  bought  with  a  cur 
rency  depreciated  to  less  than  one  per  cent. 


90         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

of  its  face,  the  government  must  some  day 
pay  for  in  gold  at  par.  The  lawgivers  took 
the  alarm  and  sat  themselves  down  to  de 
vise  a  remedy  for  the  evil  condition  of  af 
fairs.  With  that  infantile  simplicity  which 
characterized  nearly  all  the  doings  and 
quite  all  the  financial  legislation  of  the 
Richmond  Congress,  it  was  decided  that 
the  very  best  way  to  enhance  the  value  of 
the  currency  was  to  depreciate  it  still  fur 
ther  by  a  declaratory  statute,  and  then  to 
issue  a  good  deal  more  of  it.  The  act  set  a 
day,  after  which  the  currency  already  in  cir 
culation  should  be  worth  only  two  thirds  of 
its  face,  at  which  rate  it  was  made  convert 
ible  into  notes  of  the  new  issue,  which 
some,  at  least,  of  the  members  of  Congress 
were  innocent  enough  to  believe  would  be 
worth  very  nearly  their  par  value.  This 
measure  was  intended,  of  course,  to  compel 
the  funding  of  the  currency,  and  it  had 
that  effect  to  some  extent,  without  doubt. 
Much  of  the  old  currency  remained  in  cir- 


When  Money  was  "  Easy"      91 

culation,  however,  even  after  the  new  notes 
were  issued.  For  a  time  people  calculated 
the  discount,  in  passing  and  receiving  the 
old  paper,  but  as  the  new  notes  showed  an 
undiminished  tendency  to  still  further  de 
preciation,  there  were  people,  not  a  few, 
who  spared  themselves  the  trouble  of  mak 
ing  the  distinction. 

I  am  sometimes  asked  at  what  time 
prices  attained  their  highest  point  in  the 
Confederacy,  and  I  find  that  memory  fails 
to  answer  the  question  satisfactorily.  They 
were  about  as  high  as  they  could  be  in  the 
fall  of  1863,  and  I  should  be  disposed  to 
fix  upon  that  as  the  time  when  the  climax 
was  reached,  but  for  my  consciousness  that 
the  law  of  constant  appreciation  was  a  fixed 
one  throughout  the  war.  The  financial 
condition  got  steadily  worse  to  the  end. 
I  believe  the  highest  price,  relatively,  I 
ever  saw  paid,  was  for  a  pair  of  boots.  A 
cavalry  officer,  entering  a  little  country 
store,  found  there  one  pair  of  boots  which 


02         A   Rebel's  Recollections 

fitted  him.  He  inquired  the  price.  "  Two 
hundred  dollars,"  said  the  merchant.  A 
five  hundred  dollar  bill  was  offered,  but  the 
merchant,  having  no  smaller  bills,  could 
not  change  it.  "  Never  mind,"  said  the 
cavalier,  "  I  '11  take  the  boots  anyhow. 
Keep  the  change  ;  I  never  let  a  little  mat 
ter  of  three  hundred  dollars  stand  in  the 
way  of  a  trade." 

That  was  on  the  day  before  Lee's  surren 
der,  but  it  would  not  have  been  an  impossi 
ble  occurrence  at  any  time  during  the  pre 
ceding  year.  The  money  was  of  so  little 
value  that  we  parted  with  it  gladly  whenever 
it  would  purchase  anything  at  all  desirable. 
I  cheerfully  paid  five  dollars  for  a  little  salt, 
at  Petersburg,  in  August,  1864,  and  being 
thirsty  drank  my  last  two  dollars  in  a  half- 
pint  of  cider. 

The  government's  course  in  levying  a  tax 
in  kind,  as  the  only  possible  way  of  making 
the  taxation  amount  to  anything,  led  speed 
ily  to  the  adoption  of  a  similar  plan,  as  far 


When  Money  was  "Easy"      93 

as  possible,  by  the  people.  A  physician 
would  order  from  his  planter  friend  ten  or 
twenty  visits'  worth  of  corn,  and  the  trans 
action  was  a  perfectly  intelligible  one  to 
both.  The  visits  would  be  counted  at  ante- 
war  rates,  and  the  corn  estimated  by  the 
same  standard.  In  the  early  spring  of 
1 865  I  wanted  a  horse,  and  a  friend  having 
one  to  spare,  I  sent  for  the  animal,  offering 
to  pay  whatever  the  owner  should  ask  for 
it.  He  could  not  fix  a  price,  having  liter 
ally  no  standard  of  value  to  which  he  could 
appeal,  but  he  sent  me  the  horse,  writing, 
in  reply  to  my  note,  — 

"  Take  the  horse,  and  when  the  war  shall 
be  over,  if  we  are  both  alive  and  you  are 
able,  give  me  as  good  a  one  in  return. 
Don't  send  any  note  or  due-bill.  It  might 
complicate  matters  if  either  should  die." 

A  few  months  later,  I  paid  my  debt  by 
returning  the  very  horse  I  had  bought.  I 
give  this  incident  merely  to  show  how 
utterly  without  financial  compass  or  rudder 
we  were. 


94         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

How  did  people  manage  to  live  during 
such  a  time  ?  I  am  often  asked ;  and  as 
I  look  back  at  the  history  of  those  years, 
I  can  hardly  persuade  myself  that  the  prob 
lem  was  solved  at  all.  A  large  part  of  the 
people,  however,  was  in  the  army,  and  drew 
rations  from  the  government.  During  the 
early  years  of  the  war,  officers  were  not 
given  rations,  but  were  allowed  to  buy  pro 
visions  from  the  commissaries  at  govern 
ment  prices.  Subsequently,  however,  when 
provisions  became  so  scarce  that  it  was 
necessary  to  limit  the  amount  consumed  by 
officers  as  well  as  that  eaten  by  the  men, 
the  purchase  system  was  abolished,  and 
the  whole  army  was  fed  upon  daily  rations. 
The  country  people  raised  upon  their  plan 
tations  all  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  were 
generally  allowed  to  keep  enough  of  them 
to  live  on,  the  remainder  being  taken  by 
the  subsistence  officers  for  army  use.  The 
problem  of  a  salt  supply,  on  which  depend 
ed  the  production  of  meat,  was  solved  in 


When  Money  was  "  Easy?      95 

part  by  the  establishment  of  small  salt  fac 
tories  along  the  coast,  and  in  part  by  Gov 
ernor  Letcher's  vigorous  management  of 
the  works  in  southwestern  Virginia,  and  his 
wise  distribution  of  the  product  along  the 
various  lines  of  railroad. 

In  the  cities,  living  was  not  by  any  means 
so  easy  as  in  the  country.  Business  was 
paralyzed,  and  abundant  as  money  was,  it 
seems  almost  incredible  that  city  people 
got  enough  of  it  to  live  on.  Very  many  of 
them  were  employed,  however,  in  various 
capacities,  in  the  arsenals,  departments, 
bureaus,  etc.,  and  these  were  allowed  to 
buy  rations  at  fixed  rates,  after  the  post- 
office  clerks  in  Richmond  had  brought  mat 
ters  to  a  crisis  by  resigning  their  clerkships 
to  go  into  the  army,  because  they  could  not 
support  life  on  their  salaries  of  nine  thou 
sand  dollars  a  year.  For  the  rest,  if  people 
had  anything  to  sell,  they  got  enormous 
prices  for  it,  and  could  live  a  while  on  the 
proceeds.  Above  all,  a  kindly,  helpful  spirit 


9 6         A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

was  developed  by  the  common  surfering 
and  this,  without  doubt,  kept  many  thou 
sands  of  people  from  starvation.  Those 
who  had  anything  shared  it  freely  with 
those  who  had  nothing.  There  was  no 
selfish  looking  forward,  and  no  hoarding  for 
the  time  to  come.  During  those  terrible 
last  years,  the  future  had  nothing  of  pleas 
antness  in  its  face,  and  people  learned  not 
to  think  of  it  at  all.  To  get  through  to 
day  was  the  only  care.  Nobody  formed 
any  plans  or  laid  by  any  money  for  to-mor 
row  or  next  week  or  next  year,  and  indeed 
to  most  of  us  there  really  seemed  to  be  no 
future.  I  remember  the  start  it  gave  me 
when  a  clergyman,  visiting  camp,  asked  a 
number  of  us  whether  our  long  stay  in 
defensive  works  did  not  afford  us  an  ex 
cellent  opportunity  to  study  with  a  view  to 
our  professional  life  after  the  war.  We 
were  not  used  to  think  of  ourselves  as 
possible  survivors  of  a  struggle  which  was 
every  day  perceptibly  thinning  our  ranks. 


When  Money  was  "  Easy"      97 

The  coming  of  ultimate  failure  we  saw 
clearly  enough,  but  the  future  beyond  was 
a  blank.  The  subject  was  naturally  not  a 
pleasant  one,  and  by  common  consent  it 
was  always  avoided  in  conversation,  until 
at  last  we  learned  to  avoid  it  in  thought  as 
well.  We  waited  gloomily  for  the  end,  but 
did  not  care  particularly  to  speculate  upon 
the  question  when  and  how  the  end  was  to 
come.  There  was  a  vague  longing  for  rest, 
which  found  vent  now  and  then  in  wild 
newspaper  stories  of  signs  and  omens  por 
tending  the  close  of  the  war,  but  beyond 
this  the  matter  was  hardly  ever  discussed. 
We  had  early  forbidden  ourselves  to  think 
of  any  end  to  the  struggle  except  a  success 
ful  one,  and  that  being  now  an  impossi 
bility,  we  avoided  the  subject  altogether. 
The  newspaper  stories  to  which  reference 
is  made  above  were  of  the  wildest  and  ab- 
surdest  sort.  One  Richmond  paper  issued 
in  extra,  in  which  it  was  gravely  stated 
that  there  was  a  spring  near  Fredericksburg 


98         A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

which  had  ceased  to  flow  thirty  days  before 
the  surrender  of  the  British  at  Yorktown, 
thirty  days  before  the  termination  of  the 
war  of  1812,  and  thirty  days  before  the 
Mexican  war  ended  ;  and  that  "  this  sin 
gularly  prophetic  fountain  has  now  again 
ceased  to  pour  forth  its  waters."  At  an 
other  time  a  hen  near  Lynchburg  laid  an 
egg,  the  newspapers  said,  on  which  were 
traced,  in  occult  letters,  the  words,  "peace 
in  ninety  days." 

Will  the  reader  believe  that  with  gold  at 
a  hundred  and  twenty-five  for  one,  or  twelve 
thousand  four  hundred  per  cent,  premium  ; 
when  every  day  made  the  hopelessness  of 
the  struggle  more  apparent ;  when  our  last 
man  was  in  the  field  ;  when  the  resources 
of  the  country  were  visibly  at  an  end,  there 
were  financial  theorists  who  honestly  be 
lieved  that  by  a  mere  trick  of  legislation 
the  currency  could  be  brought  back  to  par  ? 
I  heard  some  of  these  people  explain  their 
plan  during  a  two  days'  stay  in  Richmond. 


When  Money  was  "  Easy"      99 

Gold,  they  said,  is  an  inconvenient  currency 
always,  and  nobody  wants  it,  except  as  a 
basis.  The  government  has  some  gold,  — 
several  millions  in  fact,  —  and  if  Congress 
will  only  be  bold  enough  to  declare  the 
treasury  notes  redeemable  at  par  in  coin, 
we  shall  have  no  further  difficulty  with  our 
finances.  So  long  as  notes  are  redeemable 
in  gold  at  the  option  of  the  holder,  nobody 
wants  them  redeemed.  Let  the  govern 
ment  say  to  the  people,  We  will  redeem  the 
currency  whenever  you  wish,  and  nobody 
except  a  few  timid  and  unpatriotic  people 
will  care  to  change  their  convenient  for  an 
inconvenient  money.  The  gold  which  the 
government  holds  will  suffice  to  satisfy 
these  timid  ones,  and  there  will  be  an  end 
of  high  prices  and  depreciated  currency. 
The  government  can  then  issue  as  much 
more  currency  as  circumstances  may  make 
necessary,  and  strong  in  our  confidence  in 
ourselves  we  shall  be  the  richest  people  on 
earth  ;  we  shall  have  created  the  untold 
wealth  which  our  currency  represents. 


ioo       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

\  am  not  jesting.  This  is,  as  nearly  as  I 
can  repeat  it,  the  utterance  of  a  member  of 
the  Confederate  Congress  made  in  my 
presence  in  a  private  parlor.  If  the  reader 
thinks  the  man  was  insane,  I  beg  him  to 
look  over  the  reports  of  the  debates  on 
financial  matters  which  have  been  held  in 
Washington. 

The  effects  of  the  extreme  depreciation 
of  the  currency  were  sometimes  almost 
ludicrous.  One  of  my  friends,  a  Richmond 
lady,  narrowly  escaped  very  serious  trouble 
in  an  effort  to  practice  a  wise  economy. 
Anything  for  which  the  dealers  did  not  ask 
an  outrageously  high  price  seemed  wonder 
fully  cheap  always,  and  she,  at  least,  lacked 
the  self-control  necessary  to  abstain  from 
buying  largely  whenever  she  found  any 
thing  the  price  of  which  was  lower  than 
she  had  supposed  it  would  be.  Going  into 
market  one  morning  with  "  stimulated  ideas 
of  prices,"  as  she  phrased  it,  the  conse 
quence  of  having  paid  a  thousand  dollars 


When  Money  was  "Easy"     101 

for  a  barrel  of  flour,  she  was  surprised  to 
find  nearly  everything  selling  for  consid 
erably  less  than  she  had  expected.  Think 
ing  that  for  some  unexplained  cause  there 
was  a  temporary  depression  in  prices,  she 
purchased  pretty  largely  in  a  good  many 
directions,  buying,  indeed,  several  things 
for  which  she  had  almost  no  use  at  all,  and 
buying  considerably  more  than  she  needed 
of  other  articles.  As  she  was  quitting  the 
market  on  foot,  —  for  it  had  become  dis 
reputable  in  Richmond  to  ride  in  a  carriage, 
and  the  ladies  would  not  do  it  on  any  ac 
count,  —  she  was  tapped  on  the  shoulder 
by  an  officer  who  told  her  she  was  under 
arrest,  for  buying  in  market  to  sell  again. 
As  the  lady  was  well  known  to  prominent 
people  she  was  speedily  released,  but  she 
thereafter  curbed  her  propensity  to  buy 
freely  of  cheap  things.  Buying  to  sell 
again  had  been  forbidden  under  severe  pen 
alties,  —  an  absolutely  necessary  measure 
Cor  the  protection  of  the  people  against  the 


IO2       A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

rapacity  of  the  hucksters,  who,  going  earl) 
into  the  markets,  would  buy  literally  every 
thing  there,  and  by  agreement  among  them 
selves  double  or  quadruple  the  already  ex 
orbitant  rates.  It  became  necessary  also 
to  suppress  the  gambling-houses  in  the  in 
terest  of  the  half-starved  people.  At  such 
a  time,  of  course,  gambling  was  a  very  com 
mon  vice,  and  the  gamblers  made  Rich 
mond  their  head-quarters.  It  was  the  cus 
tom  of  the  proprietors  of  these  establish 
ments  to  set  costly  suppers  in  their  parlors 
every  night,  for  the  purpose  of  attracting 
visitors  likely  to  become  victims.  For 
these  suppers  they  must  have  the  best  of 
everything  without  stint,  and  their  lavish 
rivalry  in  the  poorly  stocked  markets  had 
the  effect  of  advancing  prices  to  a  danger 
ous  point.  To  suppress  the  gambling- 
houses  was  the  sole  remedy,  and  it  was 
only  by  uncommonly  severe  measures  that 
the  suppression  could  be  accomplished.  It 
was  therefore  enacted  that  any  one  found 


When  Money  was  "  Easy?     103 

guilty  of  keeping  a  gambling-house  should 
be  publicly  whipped  upon  the  bare  back, 
and  as  the  infliction  of  the  penalty  in  one 
or  two  instances  effectually  and  perma 
nently  broke  up  the  business  of  gambling, 
even  in  the  disorganized  and  demoralized 
state  in  which  society  then  was,  it  may  be 
said  with  confidence  that  whipping  is  the 
one  certain  remedy  for  this  evil.  Whether 
it  be  not,  in  ordinary  cases,  worse  than  the 
evil  which  it  cures,  it  is  not  our  business 
just  now  to  inquire. 

The  one  thing  which  we  were  left  almost 
wholly  without,  during  the  war,  was  litera 
ture.  Nobody  thought  of  importing  books 
through  the  blockade,  to  any  adequate  ex 
tent,  and  the  facilities  for  publishing  them, 
even  if  we  had  had  authors  to  write  them, 
were  very  poor  indeed.  A  Mobile  firm  re 
printed  a  few  of  the  more  popular  books  of 
the  time,  Les  Miserables,  Great  Expecta 
tions,  etc ,  and  I  have  a  pamphlet  edition  of 
Owen  Meredith's  Tannhiiuser,  bound  ir 


A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

coarse  wall-paper,  for  which  I  paid  seven 
dollars,  in  Charleston.  Singularly  enough, 
I  bought  at  the  same  time  a  set  of  Dickens's 
works,  of  English  make,  well  printed  and 
bound  in  black  cloth,  for  four  dollars  a 
volume,  a  discrepancy  which  I  am  wholly 
unable  to  explain.  In  looking  through  a 
file  of  the  Richmond  Examiner  extending 
over  most  of  the  year  1864,  I  find  but  one 
book  of  any  sort  advertised,  and  the  price 
of  that,  a  duodecimo  volume  of  only  72 
pages,  was  five  dollars,  the  publishers  prom 
ising  to  send  it  by  mail,  post-paid,  on  re 
ceipt  of  the  price. 

Towards  the  last,  as  I  have  already  said, 
resort  was  had  frequently  to  first  principles, 
and  bartering,  or  "  payment  in  kind,"  as  it 
was  called,  became  common,  especially  in 
those  cases  in  which  it  was  necessary  to 
announce  prices  in  advance.  To  fix  a  price 
for  the  future  in  Confederate  money  when 
it  was  daily  becoming  more  and  more  exag 
geratedly  worthless,  would  have  been  sheer 


When  Money  was  "  Easy?     105 

folly  ;  and  so  educational  institutions,  coun 
try  boarding-houses,  etc.,  advertised  for 
patronage  at  certain  prices,  payment  to  be 
made  in  provisions  at  the  rates  prevailing 
in  September,  1860.  In  the  advertisement 
of  Hampden  Sidney  College,  in  the  Ex 
aminer  for  October  4,  1864,  I  find  it  stated 
that  students  may  get  board  in  private 
families  at  about  eight  dollars  a  month,  pay 
able  in  this  way.  The  strong  contrast  be 
tween  the  prices  of  1860  and  those  of  1864 
is  shown  by  a  statement,  in  the  same  ad 
vertisement,  that  the  students  who  may 
get  board  at  eight  dollars  a  month  in  pro 
visions,  can  buy  wood  at  twenty-five  dollars 
a  cord  and  get  their  washing  done  for  seven 
dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  dozen  pieces. 

This  matter  of  prices  was  frequently 
made  a  subject  for  jesting  in  private,  but 
for  the  most  part  it  was  carefully  avoided 
in  the  newspapers.  It  was  too  ominous  of 
evil  to  be  a  fit  topic  of  editorial  discussion 
on  ordinary  occasions.  As  with  the  ac- 


io6       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

counts  of  battles  in  which  our  arms  were 
not  successful,  necessary  references  to  the 
condition  of  the  finances  were  crowded  into 
a  corner,  as  far  out  of  sight  as  possible. 
The  Examiner,  being  a  sort  of  newspaper 
Ishmael,  did  now  and  then  bring  the  sub 
ject  up,  however,  and  on  one  occasion  it 
denounced  with  some  fierceness  the  charges 
prevailing  in  the  schools  ;  and  I  quote  a 
passage  from  Prof.  Sidney  H.  Owens's  re 
ply,  which  is  interesting  as  a  summary  of 
the  condition  of  things  in  the  South  at  that 
time  :  — 

"The  charges  made  for  tuition  are  about 
five  or  six  times  as  high  as  in  1860.  Now. 
sir,  your  shoemaker,  carpenter,  butcher, 
market  man,  etc.,  demand  from  twenty,  to 
thirty,  to  forty  times  as  much  as  in  1860. 
Will  you  show  me  a  civilian  who  is  charg 
ing  only  six  times  the  prices  charged  in 
1 860,  except  the  teacher  only  ?  As  to  the 
amassing  of  fortunes  by  teachers,  spoken 
of  in  your  article,  make  your  calculations, 


When  Money  was  "  Easy"      107 

sir,  and  you  will  find  that  to  be  almost  an 
Absurdity,  since  they  pay  from  twenty  to 
forty  prices  for  everything  used,  and  are 
denounced  exorbitant  ana  unreasonable  in 
demanding  five  or  six  prices  for  their  own 
labor  and  skill." 

There  were  compensations,  however, 
When  gold  was  at  twelve  thousand  per 
cent,  premium  with  us,  we  had  the  consola 
tion  of  knowing  that  it  was  in  the  neigh 
borhood  of  one  hundred  above  par  in  New 
York,  and  a  Richmond  paper  of  September 
22,  1864,  now  before  me,  fairly  chuckles 
over  the  high  prices  prevailing  at  the  North, 
in  a  two-line  paragraph  which  says,  "  Tar 
is  selling  in  New  York  at  two  dollars  a 
pound.  It  used  to  cost  eighty  cents  a  bar 
rel."  That  paragraph  doubtless  made  many 
i  five-dollar  beefsteak  palatable. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  CHEVALIER  OF  THE  LOST  CAUSE. 

THE  queer  people  who  devote  their  en 
ergies  to  the  collection  of  autographs  have 
a  habit,  as  everybody  whose  name  has  been 
three  times  in  print  must  have  discovered, 
of  soliciting  from  their  victim  "an  auto 
graph  with  a  sentiment,"  and  the  unfortu 
nate  one  is  expected,  in  such  cases,  to  say 
something  worthy  of  himself,  something 
especially  which  shall  be  eminently  charac 
teristic,  revealing,  in  a  single  sentence,  the 
whole  man,  or  woman,  as  the  case  may  be. 
How  large  a  proportion  of  the  efforts  to  do 
this  are  measurably  successful,  nobody  but 
a  collector  of  the  sort  referred  to  can  say  ; 
but  it  seems  probable  that  the  most  char 
acteristic  autograph  "  sentiments  "  are  those 
which  are  written  of  the  writer's  own  mo- 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     109 

tion  and  not  of  malice  aforethought.  I  re 
member  seeing  a  curious  collection  of  these 
once,  many  of  which  were  certainly  not 
unworthy  the  men  who  wrote  them.  One 
read,  "  I.  O.  U.  fifty  pounds  lost  at  play,  — 
CHARLES  JAMES  Fox  ; "  and  another  was  a 
memorandum  of  sundry  wagers  laid,  signed 
by  the  Right  Honorable  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan.  These,  I  thought,  bore  the  im 
press  of  their  authors'  character,  and  it  is 
at  the  least  doubtful  whether  either  of  the 
distinguished  gentlemen  would  have  done 
half  so  well  in  answer  to  a  modest  request 
for  a  sentiment  and  a  signature. 

In  the  great  dining-hall  of  the  Briars,  an 
old-time  mansion  in  the  Shenandoah  Val 
ley,  the  residence  of  Mr.  John  Esten  Cooke, 
there  hangs  a  portrait  of  a  broad-shouldered 
cavalier,  and  beneath  is  written,  in  the 
hand  of  the  cavalier  himself, 
"  Yours  to  count  on, 

J.  E.  B.  STUART," 
an  autograph  sentiment  which  seems  to  me 


i  io       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

a  very  perfect  one  in  its  way.  There  was 
no  point  in  Stuart's  character  more  strongly 
marked  than  the  one  here  hinted  at.  He 
was  "  yours  to  count  on "  always :  your 
friend  if  possible,  your  enemy  if  you  would 
have  it  so,  but  your  friend  or  your  enemy 
"  to  count  on,"  in  any  case.  A  franker, 
more  transparent  nature,  it  is  impossible  to 
conceive.  What  he  was  he  professed  to 
be.  That  which  he  thought,  he  said,  and 
his  habit  of  thinking  as  much  good  as  he 
could  of  those  about  him  served  to  make 
his  frankness  of  speech  a  great  friend- 
winner. 

I  saw  him  for  the  first  time  when  he  was 
a  colonel,  in  command  of  the  little  squadron 
of  horsemen  known  as  the  first  regiment  of 
Virginia  cavalry.  The  company  to  which  I 
belonged  was  assigned  to  this  regiment 
immediately  after  the  evacuation  of  Har 
per's  Ferry  by  the  Confederates.  General 
Johnston's  army  was  at  Winchester,  and 
the  Federal  force  under  General  Patterson 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     1 1 i 

lay  around  Martinsburg.  Stuart,  with  his 
three  or  four  hundred  men,  was  encamped 
at  Bunker  Hill,  about  midway  between  the 
two,  and  thirteen  miles  from  support  of  any 
kind.  He  had  chosen  this  position  as  a 
convenient  one  from  which  to  observe  the 
movements  of  the  enemy,  and  the  tireless 
activity  which  marked  his  subsequent  ca 
reer  so  strongly  had  already  begun.  As 
he  afterwards  explained,  it  was  his  purpose 
to  train  and  school  his  men,  quite  as  much 
as  anything  else,  that  prompted  the  greater 
part  of  his  madcap  expeditions  at  this  time, 
and  if  there  be  virtue  in  practice  as  a  means 
of  perfection,  he  was  certainly  an  excellent 
school-master. 

My  company  arrived  at  the  camp  about 
noon,  after  a  march  of  three  or  four  days, 
having  traveled  twenty  miles  that  morn 
ing.  Stuart,  whom  we  encountered  as  we 
entered  the  camp,  assigned  us  our  position, 
and  ordered  our  tents  pitched.  Our  cap 
tain,  who  was  even  worse  disciplined  than 


H2       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

we  were,  seeing  a  much  more  comfortable 
camping-place  than  the  muddy  one  assigned 
to  us,  and  being  a  comfort-loving  gentle 
man,  proceeded  to  lay  out  a  model  camp 
at  a  distance  of  fifty  yards  from  the  spot 
indicated.  It  was  not  long  before  the 
colonel  particularly  wished  to  consult  with 
that  captain,  and  after  the  consultation  the 
volunteer  officer  was  firmly  convinced  that 
all  West  Point  graduates  were  martinets, 
with  no  knowledge  whatever  of  the  courte 
sies  due  from  one  gentleman  to  another. 

We  were  weary  after  our  long  journey, 
and  disposed  to  welcome  the  prospect  of 
rest  which  our  arrival  in  the  camp  held 
out.  But  resting,  as  we  soon  learned,  had 
small  place  in  our  colonel's  tactics.  We 
had  been  in  camp  perhaps  an  hour,  when 
an  order  came  directing  that  the  company 
be  divided  into  three  parts,  each  under 
command  of  a  lieutenant,  and  that  these  re 
port  immediately  for  duty.  Reporting,  we 
were  directed  to  scout  through  the  country 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     1 1 3 

around  Martinsburg,  going  as  near  the 
town  as  possible,  and  to  give  battle  to  any 
cavalry  force  we  might  meet.  Here  was 
a  pretty  lookout,  certainly!  Our  officers 
knew  not  one  inch  of  the  country,  and 
might  fall  into  all  sorts  of  traps  and  ambus 
cades  ;  and  what  if  we  should  meet  a  caval 
ry  force  greatly  superior  to  our  own  ?  This 
West  Point  colonel  was  rapidly  forfeiting 
our  good  opinion.  Our  lieutenants  were 
brave  fellows,  however,  and  they  led  us 
boldly  if  ignorantly,  almost  up  to  the  very 
gates  of  the  town  occupied  by  the  enemy. 
We  saw  some  cavalry  but  met  none,  their 
orders  not  being  so  peremptorily  belligerent, 
perhaps,  as  ours  were  ;  wherefore  they  gave 
us  no  chance  to  fight  them.  The  next 
morning  our  unreasonable  colonel  again 
ordered  us  to  mount,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  there  were  companies  in  the  camp 
which  had  done  nothing  at  all  the  day  be 
fore.  This  time  he  led  us  himself,  taking 
pains  to  get  us  as  nearly  as  possible  sur 


fi4       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

rounded  by  infantry,  and  then  laughingly 
telling  us  that  our  chance  for  getting  out 
of  the  difficulty,  except  by  cutting  our  way 
through,  was  an  exceedingly  small  one.  I 
think  we  began  about  this  time  to  suspect 
that  we  were  learning  something,  and  that 
this  reckless  colonel  was  trying  to  teach  us. 
But  that  he  was  a  hare-brained  fellow,  lack 
ing  the  caution  belonging  to  a  commander, 
.  we  were  unanimously  agreed.  He  led  us 
out  of  the  place  at  a  rapid  gait,  before  the 
one  gap  in  the  enemy's  lines  could  be 
closed,  and  then  jauntily  led  us  into  one  or 
two  other  traps,  before  taking  us  back  to 
camp. 

But  it  was  not  until  General  Patterson 
began  his  feint  against  Winchester  that  our 
colonel  had  full  opportunity  to  give  us  his 
field  lectures.  When  the  advance  began, 
and  our  pickets  were  driven  in,  the  most 
natural  thing  to  do,  in  our  view  of  the  situ 
ation,  was  to  fall  back  upon  our  infantry 
supports  at  Winchester,  and  I  remember 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      1 1 5 

g  various  expressions  of  doubt  as  to 
the  colonel's  sanity  when,  instead  of  falling 
back,  he  marched  his  handful  of  men  right 
up  to  the  advancing  lines,  and  ordered  us 
to  dismount.  The  Federal  skirmish  line 
was  coming  toward  us  at  a  double-quick, 
and  we  were  set  going  toward  it  at  a  like 
rate  of  speed,  leaving  our  horses  hundreds 
of  yards  to  the  rear.  We  could  see  that 
the  skirmishers  alone  outnumbered  us  three 
or  four  times,  and  it  really  seemed  that  our 
colonel  meant  to  sacrifice  his  command 
deliberately.  He  waited  until  the  infantry 
was  within  about  two  hundred  yards  of  us, 
we  being  in  the  edge  of  a  little  grove,  and 
they  on  the  other  side  of  an  open  field. 
Then  Stuart  cried  out,  "  Backwards  - 
march  !  steady,  men,  —  keep  your  faces  to 
the  enemy !  "  and  we  marched  in  that  way 
through  the  timber,  delivering  our  shot-gun 
fire  slowly  as  we  fell  back  toward  our 
horses.  Then  mounting,  with  the  skir 
mishers  almost  upon  us,  we  retreated,  not 


Li6       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

hurriedly,  but  at  a  slow  trot,  which  the 
colonel  would  on  no  account  permit  us  to 
change  into  a  gallop.  Taking  us  out  into 
the  main  road  he  halted  us  in  column,  with 
our  backs  to  the  enemy. 

"  Attention  !  "  he  cried.  "  Now  I  want 
to  talk  to  you,  men.  You  are  brave  fel 
lows,  and  patriotic  ones  too,  but  you  are 
ignorant  of  this  kind  of  work,  and  I  am 
teaching  you.  I  want  you  to  observe  that 
a  good  man  on  a  good  horse  can  never  be 
caught.  Another  thing  :  cavalry  can  trot 
away  from  anything,  and  a  gallop  is  a  gait 
unbecoming  a  soldier,  unless  he  is  going 
toward  the  enemy.  Remember  that.  We 
gallop  toward  the  enemy,  and  trot  away,  al 
ways.  Steady  now  !  don't  break  ranks !  " 

And  as  the  words  left  his  lips  a  shell 
from  a  battery  half  a  mile  to  the  rear  hissed 
over  our  heads. 

"  There,"  he  resumed.  "  I  Ve  been  wait 
ing  for  that,  and  watching  those  fellows.  I 
knew  they  'd  shoot  too  high,  and  I  wanted 
you  to  learn  how  shells  sound." 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      117 

We  spent  the  next  day  or  two  literally 
within  the  Federal  lines.  We  were  shelled, 
skirmished  with,  charged,  and  surrounded 
scores  of  times,  until  we  learned  to  hold  in 
high  regard  our  colonel's  masterly  skill  in 
getting  into  and  out  of  perilous  positions. 
He  seemed  to  blunder  into  them  in  sheer 
recklessness,  but  in  getting  out  he  showed 
us  the  quality  of  his  genius  ;  and  before  we 
reached  Manassas,  we  had  learned,  among 
other  things,  to  entertain  a  feeling  closely 
akin  to  worship  for  our  brilliant  and  daring 
leader.  We  had  begun  to  understand,  too, 
how  much  force  he  meant  to  give  to  his 
favorite  dictum  that  the  cavalry  is  the  eye 
of  the  army. 

His  restless  activity  was  one,  at  least,  of 
the  qualities  which  enabled  him  to  win  the 
reputation  he  achieved  so  rapidly.  He 
could  never  be  still.  He  was  rarely  ever 
in  camp  at  all,  and  he  never  showed  a  sign 
0f  fatigue.  He  led  almost  everything. 
Even  after  he  became  a  general  officer, 


ii8       A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

with  well-nigh  an  army  of  horsemen  under 
his  command,  I  frequently  followed  him  as 
my  leader  in  a  little  party  of  half  a  dozen 
troopers,  who  might  as  well  have  gone  with 
a  sergeant  on  the  duty  assigned  them  ;  and 
once  I  was  his  only  follower  on  a  scouting 
expedition,  of  which  he,  a  brigadier-general 
at  the  time,  was  the  commander.  I  had 
been  detailed  to  do  some  clerical  work  at 
his  head-quarters,  and,  having  finished  the 
task  assigned  me,  was  waiting  in  the  piazza 
of  the  house  he  occupied,  for  somebody  to 
give  me  further  orders,  when  Stuart  came 
out. 

"  Is  that  your  horse  ? "  he  asked,  going 
up  to  the  animal  and  examining  him  mi 
nutely. 

I  replied  that  he  was,  and  upon  being 
questioned  further  informed  him  that  I  did 
not  wish  to  sell  my  steed.  Turning  to  me 
suddenly,  he  said,  — 

"  Let 's  slip  off  on  a  scout,  then ;  I  '11 
ride  your  horse  and  you  can  ride  mine.  I 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     119 

want  to  try  your  beast's  paces  ; "  and 
mounting,  we  galloped  away.  Where  or 
how  far  he  intended  to  go  I  did  not  know. 
He  was  enamored  of  my  horse,  and  rode, 
I  suppose,  for  the  pleasure  of  riding  an  an 
imal  which  pleased  him.  We  passed  out 
side  our  picket  line,  and  then,  keeping  in 
the  woods,  rode  within  that  of  the  Union 
army.  Wandering  about  in  a  purposeless 
way,  we  got  a  near  view  of  some  of  the 
Federal  camps,  and  finally  finding  ourselves 
objects  of  attention  on  the  part  of  some 
well-mounted  cavalry  in  blue  uniforms,  we 
rode  rapidly  down  a  road  toward  our  own 
lines,  our  pursuers  riding  quite  as  rapidly 
immediately  behind  us. 

"  General,"  I  cried  presently,  "  there  is  a 
Federal  picket  post  on  the  road  just  ahead 
of  us.  Had  we  not  better  oblique  into  the 
woods  ? " 

"  Oh  no.  They  won't  expect  us  from 
this  direction,  and  we  can  ride  over  them 
before  they  make  up  their  minds  who  we 
are." 


120       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

Three  minutes  later  we  rode  at  full  speed 
through  the  corporal's  guard  on  picket,  and 
were  a  hundred  yards  or  more  away  before 
they  could  level  a  gun  at  us.  Then  half  a 
dozen  bullets  whistled  about  our  ears,  but 
the  cavalier  paid  no  attention  to  them. 

"  Did  you  ever  time  this  horse  for  a  half- 
mile  ?  "  was  all  he  had  to  say. 

Expeditions  of  this  singular  sort  were  by 
no  means  uncommon  occurrences  with  him. 
I  am  told  by  a  friend  who  served  on  his 
staff,  that  he  would  frequently  take  one  of 
his  aids  and  ride  away  otherwise  unattended 
into  the  enemy's  lines  ;  and  oddly  enough 
this  was  one  of  his  ways  of  making  friends 
with  any  officer  to  whom  his  rough,  boyish 
ways  had  given  offense.  He  would  take 
the  officer  with  him,  and  when  they  were 
alone  would  throw  his  arms  around  his 
companion,  and  say, — 

"  My  dear  fellow,  you  must  n't  be  angry 
with  me,  —  you  know  I  love  you." 

His  boyishness  was  always  apparent,  and 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     121 

the  affectionate  nature  of  the  man  was 
hardly  less  so,  even  in  public.  He  was 
especially  fond  of  children,  and  I  remember 
seeing  him  in  the  crowded  waiting-room  of 
the  railroad  station  at  Gordonsville  with  a 
babe  on  each  arm  ;  a  great,  bearded  war 
rior,  with  his  plumed  hat,  and  with  golden 
spurs  clanking  at  his  heels,  engaged  in  a 
mad  frolic  with  all  the  little  people  in  the 
room,  charging  them  right  and  left  with  the 
pair  of  babies  which  he  had  captured  from 
their  unknown  mothers. 

It  was  on  the  day  of  my  ride  with  him 
that  I  heard  him  express  his  views  of  the 
war  and  his  singular  aspiration  for  him 
self.  It  was  almost  immediately  after  Gen 
eral  McClellan  assumed  command  of  the 
army  of  the  Potomac,  and  while  we  weie 
rather  eagerly  expecting  him  to  attack  our 
strongly  fortified  position  at  Centreville. 
Stuart  was  talking  with  some  members  of 
his  staff,  with  whom  he  had  been  wrestling 
a  minute  before.  He  said  something  about 


122       A    Rebel's  Recollections. 

what  they  could  do  by  way  of  amusement 
when  they  should  go  into  winter-quarters. 

"  That  is  to  say,"  he  continued,  "  if 
George  B.  McClellan  ever  allows  us  to  go 
into  winter-quarters  at  all." 

"  Why,  general  ?  Do  you  think  he  will 
advance  before  spring  ? "  asked  one  of  the 
officers. 

"  Not  against  Centreville,"  replied  the 
general.  "  He  has  too  much  sense  for  that, 
and  I  think  he  knows  the  shortest  road  to 
Richmond,  too.  If  I  am  not  greatly  mis 
taken,  we  shall  hear  of  him  presently  on  his 
way  up  the  James  River." 

In  this  prediction,  as  the  reader  knows,  he 
was  right.  The  conversation  then  passed 
to  the  question  of  results. 

"  I  regard  it  as  a  foregone  conclusion," 
said  Stuart,  "  that  we  shall  ultimately  whip 
the  Yankees.  We  are.  bound  to  believe 
that,  anyhow  ;  but  the  war  is  going  to  be  a 
long  and  terrible  one,  first.  We  've  only 
just  begun  it,  and  very  few  of  us  will  see 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     123 

the  end.  All  I  ask  of  fate  is  that  I  may  be 
killed  leading  a  cavalry  charge? 

The  remark  was  not  a  boastful  or  seem 
ingly  insincere  one.  It  was  made  quietly, 
cheerfully,  almost  eagerly,  and  it  impressed 
me  at  the  time  with  the  feeling  that  the 
man's  idea  of  happiness  was  what  the 
French  call  glory,  and  that  in  his  eyes 
there  was  no  glory  like  that  of  dying  in  one 
of  the  tremendous  onsets  which  he  knew  so 
well  how  to  make.  His  wish  was  granted, 
as  we  know.  He  received  his  death-wound 
at  the  head  of  his  troopers. 

With  those  about  him  he  was  as  affec 
tionate  as  a  woman,  and  his  little  boyish 
ways  are  remembered  lovingly  by  those  of 
his  military  household  whom  I  have  met 
since  the  war  came  to  an  end.  On  one  oc 
casion,  just  after  a  battle,  he  handed  his 
coat  to  a  member  of  his  staff,  saying,  — 

"  Try  that  on,  captain,  and  see  how  it  fits 
you." 

The  garment  fitted  reasonably  well,  and 
the  general  continued,  — 


124       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

"  Pull  off  two  of  the  stars,  and  wear  the 
coat  to  the  war  department,  and  tell  the 
people  there  to  make  you  a  major." 

The  officer  did  as  his  chief  bade  him. 
Removing  two  of  the  three  stars  he  made 
the  coat  a  major's  uniform,  and  the  captain 
was  promptly  promoted  in  compliance  with 
Stuart's  request. 

General  Stuart  was,  without  doubt,  capa 
ble  of  handling  an  infantry  command  suc 
cessfully,  as  he  demonstrated  at  Chancel- 
lorsville,  where  he  took  Stonewall  Jackson's 
place  and  led  an  army  corps  in  a  very  se 
vere  engagement ;  but  his  special  fitness 
was  for  cavalry  service.  His  tastes  were 
those  of  a  horseman.  Perpetual  activity 
was  a  necessity  of  his  existence,  and  he  en 
joyed  nothing  so  much  as  danger.  Audac 
ity,  his  greatest  virtue  as  a  cavalry  com 
mander,  would  have  been  his  besetting  sin 
in  any  other  position.  Inasmuch  as  it  is 
the  business  of  the  cavalry  to  live  as  con 
stantly  as  possible  within  gunshot  of  the 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      125 

enemy,  his  recklessness  stood  him  in  ex 
cellent  stead  as  a  general  of  horse,  but  it  is 
at  least  questionable  whether  his  want  of 
caution  would  not  have  led  to  disaster  if 
his  command  had  been  of  a  less  mobile 
sort.  His  critics  say  he  was  vain,  and  he 
was  so,  as  a  boy  is.  He  liked  to  win  the 
applause  of  his  friends,  and  he  liked  still 
better  to  astonish  the  enemy,  glorying  in 
the  thought  that  his  foemen  must  admire 
his  "  impudence,"  as  he  called  it,  while  they 
dreaded  its  manifestation.  He  was  contin 
ually  doing  things  of  an  extravagantly  au 
dacious  sort,  with  no  other  purpose,  seem 
ingly,  than  that  of  making  people  stretch 
their  eyes  in  wonder.  He  enjoyed  the  ad 
miration  of  the  enemy  far  more,  I  think, 
than  he  did  that  of  his  friends.  This  fact 
was  evident  in  the  care  he  took  to  make 
himself  a  conspicuous  personage  in  every 
time  of  danger.  He  would  ride  at  some 
distance  from  his  men  in  a  skirmish,  and 
in  every  possible  way  attract  a  dangerous 


126       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

attention  to  himself.  His  slouch  hat  and 
long  plume  marked  him  in  every  battle,  and 
made  him  a  target  for  the  riflemen  to  shoot 
at.  In  all  this  there  was  some  vanity,  if  we 
choose  to  call  it  so,  but  it  was  an  excellent 
sort  of  vanity  for  a  cavalry  chief  to  culti 
vate.  I  cannot  learn  that  he  ever  boasted 
of  any  achievement,  or  that  his  vanity  was 
ever  satisfied  with  the  things  already  done. 
His  audacity  was  due,  I  think,  to  his  sense 
of  humor,  not  less  than  to  his  love  of  ap 
plause.  He  would  laugh  uproariously  over 
the  astonishment  he  imagined  the  Federal 
officers  must  feel  after  one  of  his  peculiarly 
daring  or  sublimely  impudent  performances. 
When,  after  capturing  a  large  number  of 
horses  and  mules  on  one  of  his  raids,  he 
seized  a  telegraph  station  and  sent  a  dis 
patch  to  General  Meigs,  then  Quartermas 
ter-General  of  the  United  States  army, 
complaining  that  he  could  not  afford  to 
come  after  animals  of  so  poor  a  quality,  and 
urging  that  officer  to  provide  better  ones 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     127 

for  capture  in  future,  he  enjoyed  the  joke 
quite  as  heartily  as  he  did  the  success 
which  made  it  possible. 

The  boyishness  to  which  I  have  referred 
ran  through  every  part  of  his  character  and 
every  act  of  his  life.  His  impetuosity  in 
action,  his  love  of  military  glory  and  of  the 
military  life,  his  occasional  waywardness 
with  his  friends  and  his  generous  affection 
for  them,  —  all  these  were  the  traits  of  a 
great  boy,  full,  to  running  over,  of  impul 
sive  animal  life.  His  audacity,  too,  which 
impressed  strangers  as  the  most  marked 
feature  of  his  character,  was  closely  akin  to 
that  disposition  which  Dickens  assures  us 
is  common  to  all  boy-kind,  to  feel  an  insane 
delight  in  anything  which  specially  imperils 
their  necks.  But  the  peculiarity  showed 
itself  most  strongly  in  his  love  of  uproari 
ous  fun.  Almost  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war  he  managed  to  surround  himself  with 
a  number  of  persons  whose  principal  qual 
ification  for  membership  of  his  military 


i28       A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

household  was  their  ability  to  make  fun. 
One  of  these  was  a  noted  banjo-player  and 
ex-negro  minstrel.  He  played  the  banjo 
and  sang  comic  songs  to  perfection,  and 
therefore  Stuart  wanted  him.  I  have  known 
him  to  ride  with  his  banjo,  playing  and 
singing,  even  on  a  march  which  might  be 
changed  at  any  moment  into  a  battle  ;  and 
Stuart's  laughter  on  such  occasions  was 
sure  to  be  heard  as  an  accompaniment  as 
far  as  the  minstrel's  voice  could  reach.  He 
had  another  queer  character  about  him, 
whose  chief  recommendation  was  his  gro 
tesque  fierceness  of  appearance.  This  was 
Corporal  Hagan,  a  very  giant  in  frame, 
with  an  abnormal  tendency  to  develop  hair. 
His  face  was  heavily  bearded  almost  to  his 
eyes,  and  his  voice  was  as  hoarse  as  distant 
thunder,  which  indeed  it  closely  resembled. 
Stuart,  seeing  him  in  the  ranks,  fell  in  love 
with  his  peculiarities  of  person  at  once,  and 
had  him  detailed  for  duty  at  head-quarters, 
where  he  made  him  a  corporal,  and  gave 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      129 

him  charge  of  the  stables.  Hagan,  whose 
greatness  was  bodily  only,  was  much  elated 
by  the  attention  shown  him,  and  his  person 
seemed  to  swell  and  his  voice  to  grow 
deeper  than  ever  under  the  influence  of  the 
newly  acquired  dignity  of  chevrons.  All 
this  was  amusing,  of  course,  and  Stuart's 
delight  was  unbounded.  The  man  remained 
with  him  till  the  time  of  his  death,  though 
not  always  as  a  corporal.  In  a  mad  freak 
of  fun  one  day,  the  chief  recommended  his 
corporal  for  promotion,  to  see,  he  said,  if 
the  giant  was  capable  of  further  swelling, 
and  so  the  corporal  became  a  lieutenant 
upon  the  staff. 

With  all  his  other  boyish  traits,  Stuart 
had  an  almost  child-like  simplicity  of  char 
acter,  and  the  combination  of  sturdy  man 
hood  with  juvenile  frankness  and  womanly 
tenderness  of  feeling  made  him  a  study  to 
those  who  knew  him  best.  His  religious 
feeling  was  of  that  unquestioning,  serene 
sort  which  rarely  exists  apart  from  the  inex- 
9 


130      A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

perience  and  the  purity  of  women  or  chil 
dren. 

While  I  was  serving  in  South  Carolina,  I 
met  one  evening  the  general  commanding 
the  military  district,  and  he,  upon  learning 
that  I  had  served  with  Stuart,  spent  the  en 
tire  evening  talking  of  his  friend,  for  they 
two  had  been  together  in  the  old  army 
before  the  war.  He  told  me  many  anec 
dotes  of  the  cavalier,  nearly  all  of  which 
turned  in  some  way  upon  the  generous 
boyishness  of  his  character  in  some  one  or 
other  of  its  phases.  He  said,  among  other 
things,  that  at  one  time,  in  winter-quarters 
on  the  plains  of  the  West  I  think,  he,  Stu 
art,  and  another  officer  (one  of  those  still 
living  who  commanded  the  army  of  the 
Potomac  during  the  war)  slept  together  in 
one  bed,  for  several  months.  Stuart  and 
his  brother  lieutenant,  the  general  said,  had 
a  quarrel  every  night  about  some  trifling 
thing  or  other,  just  as  boys  will,  but  when 
he  had  made  all  the  petulant  speeches  he 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      131 

could,  Stuart  would  lie  still  a  while,  and 
then,  passing  his  arm  around  the  neck  of 
his  comrade,  would  draw  his  head  to  his 
own  breast  and  say  some  affectionate  thing 
which  healed  all  soreness  of  feeling  and 
effectually  restored  the  peace.  During  the 
evening's  conversation  this  general  formu 
lated  his  opinion  of  Stuart's  military  char 
acter  in  very  striking  phrase. 

"  He  is,"  he  said,  "  the  greatest  cavalry 
officer  that  ever  lived.  He  has  all  the  dash, 
daring,  and  audacity  of  Murat,  and  a  great 
deal  more  sense."  It  was  his  opinion,  how 
ever,  that  there  were  men  in  both  armies 
who  would  come  to  be  known  as  greater 
cavalry  men  than  Stuart,  for  the  reason 
that  Stuart  used  his  men  strictly  as  cavalry, 
while  others  would  make  dragoons  of  them. 
He  believed  that  the  nature  of  our  country 
was  much  better  adapted  to  dragoon  than 
to  cavalry  service,  and  hence,  while  he 
nought  Stuart  the  best  of  cavalry  officers, 
he  doubted  his  ability  to  stand  against  such 


132       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

men  as  General  Sheridan,  whose  conception 
of  the  proper  place  of  the  horse  in  our  war 
was  a  more  correct  one,  he  thought,  than 
Stuart's.  "  To  the  popular  mind,"  he  went 
on  to  say,  "  every  soldier  who  rides  a  horse 
is  a  cavalry  man,  and  so  Stuart  will  be  meas 
ured  by  an  incorrect  standard.  He  will  be 
classed  with  General  Sheridan  and  meas 
ured  by  his  success  or  the  want  of  it.  Gen 
eral  Sheridan  is  without  doubt  the  greatest 
of  dragoon  commanders,  as  Stuart  is  the 
greatest  of  cavalry  men  ;  but  in  this  coun 
try  dragoons  are  worth  a  good  deal  more 
than  cavalry,  and  so  General  Sheridan  will 
probably  win  the  greater  reputation.  He 
will  deserve  it,  too,  because  behind  it  is  the 
sound  judgment  which. tells  him  what  use 
to  make  of  his  horsemen." 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  all  this  was 
said  before  General  Sheridan  had  made  his 
reputation  as  an  officer,  and  I  remember 
that  at  the  time  his  name  was  almost  new 
to  me. 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.      133 

From  my  personal  experience  and  obser 
vation  of  General  Stuart,  as  well  as  from 
the  testimony  of  others,  I  am  disposed  to 
think  that  he  attributed  to  every  other  man 
qualities  and  tastes  like  his  own.  Insensi 
ble  to  fatigue  himself,  he  seemed  never  to 
understand  how  a  well  man  could  want 
rest ;  and  as  for  hardship,  there  was  noth 
ing,  in  his  view,  which  a  man  ought  to  en 
joy  quite  so  heartily,  except  danger.  For  a 
period  of  ten  days,  beginning  before  and 
ending  after  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  we 
were  not  allowed  once  to  take  our  saddles 
off.  Night  and  day  we  were  in  the  imme 
diate  presence  of  the  enemy,  catching  naps 
when  there  happened  for  the  moment  to  be 
nothing  else  to  do,  standing  by  our  horses 
while  they  ate  from  our  hands,  so  that  we 
might  slip  their  bridles  on  again  in  an  in 
stant  in  the  event  of  a  surprise,  and  eating 
such  things  as  chance  threw  in  our  way, 
there  being  no  rations  anywhere  within 
reach.  After  the  battle,  we  were  kept 


134       A   Rebel's  Recollections 

scouting  almost  continually  for  two  days 
We  then  marched  to  Fairfax  Court  House, 
and  my  company  was  again  sent  out  in  de 
tachments  on  scouting  expeditions  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Vienna  and  Falls  Church. 
We  returned  to  camp  at  sunset  and  were 
immediately  ordered  on  picket.  In  the 
regular  course  of  events  we  should  have 
been  relieved  the  next  morning,  but  no 
relief  came,  and  we  were  wholly  without 
food.  Another  twenty-four  hours  passed, 
and  still  nobody  came  to  take  our  place  on 
the  picket  line.  Stuart  passed  some  of  our 
men,  however,  and  one  of  them  asked  him 
if  he  knew  we  had  been  on  duty  ten  days, 
and  on  picket  thirty-six  hours  without  food. 
"  Oh  nonsense  !  "  he  replied.  "  You  don't 
look  starved.  There 's  a  cornfield  over 
there ;  jump  the  fence  and  get  a  good 
breakfast.  You  don't  want  to  go  back  to 
camp,  I  know  ;  it 's  stupid  there,  and  all 
the  fun  is  out  here.  I  never  go  to  camp 
if  I  can  help  it.  Besides,  I  've  kept  your 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     135 

company  on  duty  all  this  time  as  a  compli 
ment.  You  boys  have  acquitted  yourselves 
too  well  to  be  neglected  now,  and  I  mean 
to  give  you  a  chance." 

We  thought  this  a  jest  at  the  time,  but 
we  learned  afterwards  that  Stuart's  idea  of 
a  supreme  compliment  to  a  company  was 
its  assignment  to  extra  hazardous  or  extra 
fatiguing  duty.  If  he  observed  specially 
good  conduct  on  the  part  of  a  company, 
squad,  or  individual,  he  was  sure  to  reward 
it  by  an  immediate  order  to  accompany  him 
upon  some  unnecessarily  perilous  expedi 
tion. 

His  men  believed  in  him  heartily,  and  it 
was  a  common  saying  among  them  that 
"  Jeb  never  says  '  Go,  boys/  but  always 
Come,  boys.' "  We  felt  sure,  too,  that 
there  was  little  prospect  of  excitement  on 
any  expedition  of  which  he  was  not  leader. 
If  the  scouting  was  to  be  merely  a  matter 
of  form,  promising  nothing  in  the  way  of 
adventure,  he  would  let  us  go  by  ourselves ; 


136       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

but  if  there  were  prospect  of  "  a  fight  or  a 
race,"  as  he  expressed  it,  we  were  sure  to 
see  his  long  plume  at  the  head  of  the  col 
umn  before  we  had  passed  outside  our  own 
line  of  pickets.  While  we  lay  in  advance 
of  Fairfax  Court  House,  after  Bull  Run, 
Stuart  spent  more  than  a  month  around  the 
extreme  outposts  on  Mason's  and  Munson's 
hills  without  once  coming  to  the  camp  of 
his  command.  When  he  wanted  a  greater 
force  than  he  could  safely  detail  from  the 
companies  on  picket  for  the  day,  he  would 
send  after  it,  and  with  details  of  this  kind 
he  lived  nearly  all  the  time  between  the 
picket  lines  of  the  two  armies.  The  out 
posts  were  very  far  in  advance  of  the  place 
at  which  we  should  have  met  and  fought 
the  enemy  if  an  advance  had  been  made, 
and  so  there  was  literally  no  use  whatever 
in  his  perpetual  scouting,  which  was  kept 
up  merely  because  the  man  could  not  rest. 
But  aside  from  the  fact  that  the  cavalry 
was  made  up  almost  exclusively  of  the 


Chevalier  of  the  Lost  Cause.     137 

young  men  whose  tastes  and  habits  spe 
cially  fitted  them  to  enjoy  this  sort  of  serv 
ice,  Stuart's  was  one  of  those  magnetic 
natures  which  always  impress  their  own 
likeness  upon  others,  and  so  it  came  to  be 
thought  a  piece  of  good  luck  to  be  detailed 
for  duty  under  his  personal  leadership. 
The  men  liked  him  and  his  ways,  one  of 
which  was  the  pleasant  habit  he  had  of 
remembering  our  names  and  faces.  I  heard 
him  say  once  that  he  knew  by  name  not 
only  every  man  in  his  old  regiment,  but 
every  one  also  in  the  first  brigade,  and  as  I 
never  knew  him  to  hesitate  for  a  name,  I 
am  disposed  to  believe  that  he  did  not 
exaggerate  his  ability  to  remember  men. 
This  and  other  like  things  served  to  make 
the  men  love  him  personally,  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  his  skill  in  winning  the 
affection  of  his  troopers  was  one  of  the  ele 
ments  of  his  success.  Certainly  no  other 
man  could  have  got  so  much  hard  service 
out  of  men  of  their  sort,  without  breeding 
discontent  among  them. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LEE,  JACKSON,  AND  SOME  LESSER  WORTHIES. 

THE  story  goes  that  when  Napoleon 
thanked  a  private  one  day  for  some  small 
service,  giving  him  the  complimentary  title 
of  "  captain,"  the  soldier  replied  with 
the  question,  "  In  what  regiment,  sire  ?  " 
confident  that  this  kind  of  recognition 
from  the  Little  Corporal  meant  nothing 
less  than  a  promotion,  in  any  case  ;  and 
while  commanders  are  not  ordinarily  in 
vested  with  Napoleon's  plenary  powers  in 
such  matters,  military  men  are  accustomed 
to  value  few  things  more  than  the  favora 
ble  comments  of  their  superiors  upon  their 
achievements  or  their  capacity.  And  yet 
a  compliment  of  the  very  highest  sort, 
which  General  Scott  paid  Robert  E.  Lee, 
very  nearly  prevented  the  great  Confederate 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others,      139 

from  achieving  a  reputation  at  all.  Up  to 
the  time  of  Virginia's  secession,  Lee  was 
serving  at  Scott's  head-quarters,  and  when 
he  resigned  and  accepted  a  commission 
from  the  governor  of  his  native  State,  Gen 
eral  Scott,  who  had  already  called  him  "  the 
flower  of  the  American  army,"  pronounced 
him  the  best  organizer  in  the  country,  and 
congratulated  himself  upon  the  fact  that 
the  Federal  organization  was  already  well 
under  way  before  Lee  began  that  of  the 
Southern  forces.  This  opinion,  coming 
from  the  man  who  was  recognized  as  best 
able  to  form  a  judgment  on  such  a  sub 
ject,  greatly  strengthened  Lee's  hand  in 
the  work  he  was  then  doing,  and  saved 
him  the  annoyance  of  dictation  from  peo 
ple  less  skilled  than  he.  But  it  nearly 
worked  his  ruin,  for  all  that.  The  adminis 
tration  at  Richmond  was  of  too  narrow  a 
mold  to  understand  that  a  man  could  be 
a  master  of  more  than  one  thing,  and  so, 
recognizing  Lee's  supreme  ability  as  an 


140       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

organizer,  the  government  seems  to  have 
assumed  that  he  was  good  for  very  little 
else,  and  until  the  summer  of  1862  he  was 
carefully  kept  out  of  the  way  of  all  great 
military  operations.  When  the  two  cen 
tres  of  strategic  interest  were  at  Winches 
ter  and  Manassas,  General  Lee  was  kept 
in  Western  Virginia  with  a  handful  of  raw 
troops,  where  he  could  not  possibly  accom 
plish  anything  for  the  cause,  or  even  exer 
cise  the  small  share  of  fighting  and  stra 
tegic  ability  which  the  government  was 
willing  to  believe  he  possessed.  When 
there  was  no  longer  any  excuse  for  keep 
ing  him  there,  he  was  disinterred,  as  it 
were,  and  reburied  in  the  swamps  of  the 
South  Carolina  coast. 

I  saw  him  for  the  first  time,  in  Rich 
mond,  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  war, 
dining  with  him  at  the  house  of  a  friend. 
He  was  then  in  the  midst  of  his  first  popu 
larity.  He  had  begun  the  work  of  organiza 
tion,  and  was  everywhere  recognized  as  the 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     141 

leader  who  was  to  create  an  army  for  us 
out  of  the  volunteer  material.  I  do  not 
remember,  with  any  degree  of  certainty, 
whether  or  not  we  expected  him  also  to 
distinguish  himself  in  the  field,  but  as  Mr. 
Davis  and  his  personal  followers  were  still 
in  Montgomery,  it  is  probable  that  the 
narrowness  of  their  estimate  of  the  chief 
tain  was  not  yet  shared  by  anybody  in 
Richmond.  Lee  was  at  this  time  a  young- 
looking,  middle-aged  man,  with  dark  hair, 
dark  moustache,  and  an  otherwise  smooth 
face,  and  a  portrait  taken  then  would  hard 
ly  be  recognized  at  all  by  those  who  knew 
him  only  after  the  cares  and  toils  of  war 
had  furrowed  his  face  and  bleached  his  hair 
and  beard.  He  was  a  model  of  manly 
beauty ;  large,  well  made,  and  graceful. 
His  head  was  a  noble  one,  and  his  coun 
tenance  told,  at  a  glance,  of  his  high  char 
acter  and  of  that  perfect  balance  of  faculties, 
mental,  moral,  and  physical,  which  consti 
tuted  the  chief  element  of  his  greatness, 


142       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

There  was  nothing  about  him  which  im 
pressed  one  more  than  his  eminent  robust 
ness,  a  quality  no  less  marked  in  his  in 
tellect  and  his  character  than  in  his  phys 
ical  constitution.  If  his  shapely  person 
suggested  a  remarkable  capacity  for  endur 
ance,  his  manner,  his  countenance,  and  his 
voice  quite  as  strongly  hinted  at  the  great 
soul  which  prompted  him  to  take  upon  him 
self  the  responsibility  for  the  Gettysburg 
campaign,  when  the  people  were  loudest 
in  their  denunciations  of  the  government 
as  the  author  of  that  ill-timed  undertaking. 
I  saw  him  next  in  South  Carolina  dur 
ing  the  winter  of  1861-62.  He  was  living 
quietly  at  a  little  place  called  Coosaw- 
hatchie,  on  the  Charleston  and  Savannah 
Railroad.  He  had  hardly  any  staff  with 
him,  and  was  surrounded  with  none  of  the 
pomp  and  circumstance  of  war.  His  dress 
bore  no  marks  of  his  rank,  and  hardly  in 
dicated  even  that  he  was  a  military  man 
He  was  much  given  to  solitary  afternoon 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     143 

rambles,  and  came  almost  every  day  to  the 
camp  of  our  battery,  where  he  wandered 
alone  and  in  total  silence  around  the  stables 
and  through  the  gun  park,  much  as  a 
farmer  curious  as  to  cannon  might  have 
done.  Hardly  any  of  the  men  knew  who 
he  was,  and  one  evening  a  sergeant,  riding 
in  company  with  a  partially  deaf  teamster, 
met  him  in  the  road  and  saluted.  The 
teamster  called  out  to  his  companion,  in  a 
loud  voice,  after  the  manner  of  deaf  people  : 

"  I  say,  sergeant,  who  is  that  durned  old 
fool  ?  He 's  always  a-pokin'  round  my 
bosses  just  as  if  he  meant  to  steal  one  of 
'em." 

Certainly  the  honest  fellow  was  not  to 
blame  for  his  failure  to  recognize,  in  the 
farmer  -  looking  pedestrian,  the  chieftain 
who  was  shortly  to  win  the  greenest  lau 
rels  the  South  had  to  give.  During  the 
following  summer  General  Johnston's  "  bad 
habit  of  getting  himself  wounded  "  served 
to  bring  Lee  to  the  front,  and  from  that 


144       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

rime  till  the  end  of  the  war  he  was  the 
idol  of  army  and  people.  The  faith  he  in 
spired  was  simply  marvelous.  We  knew 
very  well  that  he  was  only  a  man,  and  very 
few  of  us  would  have  disputed  the  abstract 
proposition  that  he  was  liable  to  err  ;  but 
practically  we  believed  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Our  confidence  in  his  skill  and  his  invin 
cibility  was  absolutely  unbounded.  Our 
faith  in  his  wisdom  and  his  patriotism  was 
equally  perfect,  and  from  the  day  on  which 
he  escorted  McClellan  to  his  gun-boats  till 
the  hour  of  his  surrender  at  Appomattox, 
there  was  never  a  time  when  he  might  not 
have  usurped  all  the  powers  of  government 
without  exciting  a  murmur.  Whatever 
rank  as  a  commander  history  may  assign 
him,  it  is  certain  that  no  military  chieftain 
was  ever  more  perfect  master  than  he  of 
the  hearts  of  his  followers.  When  he  ap 
peared  in  the  presence  of  troops  he  was 
sometimes  cheered  vociferously,  but  far 
more  frequently  his  coming  was  greeted 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     145 

with  a  profound  silence,  which  expressed 
much  more  truly  than  cheers  could  have 
done  the  well  -  nigh  religious  reverence 
with  which  the  men  regarded  his  person. 

General  Lee  had  a  sententious  way  of 
saying  things  which  made  all  his  utter 
ances  peculiarly  forceful.  His  language  was 
always  happily  chosen,  and  a  single  sen 
tence  from  his  lips  often  left  nothing  more 
to  be  said.  As  good  an  example  of  this 
as  any,  perhaps,  was  his  comment  upon  the 
military  genius  ot  General  Meade.  Not 
very  long  after  that  officer  took  command 
of  the  army  of  the  Potomac,  a  skirmish 
occurred,  and  none  of  General  Lee's  staff 
officers  being  present,  an  acquaintance  of 
mine  was  detailed  as  his  personal  aid  for 
the  day,  and  I  am  indebted  to  him  for  the 
anecdote.  Some  one  asked  our  chief  what 
he  thought  of  the  new  leader  on  the  other 
side,  and  in  reply  Lee  said,  "  General  Meade 
will  commit  no  blunder  in  my  front,  and  if 
I  commit  one  he  will  make  haste  to  take 

10 


146       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

advantage  of  it."     It  is  difficult  to  see  what 
more  he  could  have  said  on  the  subject. 

I  saw  him  for  the  last  time  during  the 
war,  at  Amelia  Court  House,  in  the  midst 
of  the  final  retreat,  and  I  shall  never  forget 
the  heart-broken  expression  his  face  wore, 
or  the  still  sadder  tones  of  his  voice  as  he 
gave  me  the  instructions  I  had  come  to 
ask.  The  army  was  in  utter  confusion.  It 
was  already  evident  that  we  were  being 
beaten  back  upon  James  River  and  could 
never  hope  to  reach  the  Roanoke,  on  which 
stream  alone  there  might  be  a  possibility 
of  making  a  stand.  General  Sheridan  was 
harassing  our  broken  columns  at  every 
step,  and  destroying  us  piecemeal.  Worse 
than  all,  General  Lee  had  been  deserted  by 
the  terrified  government  in  the  very  mo 
ment  of  his  supreme  need,  and  the  food 
had  been  snatched  from  the  mouths  of  the 
famished  troops  (as  is  more  fully  explained 
in  another  chapter)  that  the  flight  of  the 
president  and  his  followers  might  be  has- 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     147 

tened.  The  load  put  thus  upon  Lee's 
shoulders  was  a  very  heavy  one  for  so 
conscientious  a  man  as  he  to  bear  ;  and 
knowing,  as  every  Southerner  does,  his 
habit  of  taking  upon  himself  all  blame  for 
whatever  went  awry,  we  cannot  wonder 
that  he  was  sinking  under  the  burden.  His 
face  was  still  calm,  as  it  always  was,  but  his 
carriage  was  no  longer  erect,  as  his  soldiers 
had  been  used  to  see  it.  The  troubles  of 
those  last  days  had  already  plowed  great 
furrows  in  his  forehead.  His  eyes  were 
red  as  if  with  weeping  ;  his  cheeks  sunken 
and  haggard  ;  his  face  colorless.  No  one 
who  looked  upon  him  then,  as  he  stood 
there  in  full  view  of  the  disastrous  end,  can 
ever  forget  the  intense  agony  written  upon 
his  features.  And  yet  he  was  calm,  self- 
possessed,  and  deliberate.  Failure  and  the 
sufferings  of  his  men  grieved  him  sorely, 
but  they  could  not  daunt  him,  and  his 
moral  greatness  was  never  more  manifest 
than  during  those  last  terrible  days.  Even 


148       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

in  the  final  correspondence  with  General 
Grant,  Lee's  manliness  and  courage  and 
ability  to  endure  lie  on  the  surface,  and  it 
is  not  the  least  honorable  thing  in  Genera] 
Grant's  history  that  he  showed  himself 
capable  of  appreciating  the  character  of  this 
manly  foeman,  as  he  did  when  he  returned 
Lee's  surrendered  sword  with  the  remark 
that  he  knew  of  no  one  so  worthy  as  its 
owner  to  wear  it. 

After  the  war  the  man  who  had  com 
manded  the  Southern  armies  remained 
master  of  all  Southern  hearts,  and  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  wise  advice  he 
gave  in  reply  to  the  hundreds  of  letters 
sent  him  prevented  many  mistakes  and 
much  suffering.  The  young  men  of  the 
South  were  naturally  disheartened,  and  a 
general  exodus  to  Mexico,  Brazil,  and  the 
Argentine  Republic  was  seriously  contem 
plated.  General  Lee's  advice,  "  Stay  at 
home,  go  to  work,  and  hold  your  land," 
effectually  prevented  this  saddest  of  all 


^  Jackson,  and  Others.     149 

blunders ;  and  his  example  was  no  less 
efficacious  than  his  words,  in  recommend 
ing  a  diligent  attention  to  business  as  the 
best  possible  cure  for  the  evils  wrought  by 
the  war. 

From  the  chieftain  who  commanded  our 
armies  to  his  son  and  successor  in  the 
presidency  of  Washington-Lee  University, 
the  transition  is  a  natural  one  ;  and,  while 
it  is  my  purpose,  in  these  reminiscences, 
to  say  as  little  as  possible  of  men  still  liv 
ing,  I  may  at  least  refer  to  General  G.  W. 
Custis  Lee  as  the  only  man  I  ever  heard 
of  who  tried  to  decline  a  promotion  from 
brigadier  to  major  general,  for  the  reason 
that  he  thought  there  were  others  better 
entitled  than  he  to  the  honor.  I  have  it 
from  good  authority  that  President  Davis 
went  in  person  to  young  Lee's  head 
quarters  to  entreat  a  reconsideration  of 
that  officer's  determination  to  refuse  the 
honor,  and  that  he  succeeded  with  diffi 
culty  in  pressing  the  promotion  upon  the 


150       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

singularly  modest  gentleman.  Whethei 
or  not  this  younger  Lee  has  inherited  his 
father's  military  genius  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing,  but  we  are  left  in  no  uncer 
tainty  as  to  his  possession  of  his  father's 
manliness  and  modesty,  and  personal 
worth. 

Jackson  was  always  a  surprise.  Nobody 
ever  understood  him,  and  nobody  has  ever 
been  quite  able  to  account  for  him.  The 
members  of  his  own  staff,  of  whom  I  hap 
pen  to  have  known  one  or  two  intimately, 
seem  to  have  failed,  quite  as  completely  as 
the  rest  of  the  world,  to  penetrate  his  sin 
gular  and  contradictory  character.  His  bi 
ographer,  Mr.  John  Esten  Cooke,  read  him 
more  perfectly  perhaps  than  any  one  else, 
but  even  he,  in  writing  of  the  hero,  evi 
dently  views  him  from  the  outside.  Dr. 
Dabney,  another  of  Jackson's  historians, 
gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  man,  in  one  sin 
gle  aspect  of  his  character,  which  may  be  a 
clew  to  the  whole.  He  says  there  are  three 


>  Jackson,  and  Others.     151 

kinds  of  courage,  of  which  two  only  are 
bravery.  These  three  varieties  of  courage 
are,  first,  that  of  the  man  who  is  simply  in 
sensible  of  danger ;  second,  that  of  men 
who,  understanding,  appreciating,  and  fear 
ing  danger,  meet  it  boldly  nevertheless, 
from  motives  of  pride ;  and  third,  the  cour 
age  of  men  keenly  alive  to  danger,  who  face 
it  simply  from  a  high  sense  of  duty.1  Of 
this  latter  kind,  the  biographer  tells  us,  was 
Jackson's  courage,  and  certainly  there  can 
be  no  better  clew  to  his  character  than  this. 
Whatever  other  mysteries  there  may  have 
been  about  the  man,  it  is  clear  that  his 
well-nigh  morbid  devotion  to  duty  was  his 
ruling  characteristic. 

But  nobody  ever  understood  him  fully, 
and  he  was  a  perpetual  surprise  to  friend 
and  foe  alike.  The  cadets  and  the  grad 
uates  of  the  Virginia  Military  Institute, 

1  As  I  have  no  copy  of  Dr.  Dabney's  work  by  me,  and 
have  seen  none  for  about  ten  years,  I  cannot  pretend  to 
quote  the  passage  ;  but  I  have  given  its  substance  in  nry 
own  words. 


152       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

who  had  known  him  as  a  professor  there, 
held  him  in  small  esteem  at  the  outset.  I 
talked  with  many  of  them,  and  found  no 
dissent  whatever  from  the  opinion  that 
General  Gilham  and  General  Smith  were 
the  great  men  of  the  institute,  and  that 
Jackson,  whom  they  irreverently  nicknamed 
Tom  Fool  Jackson,  could  never  be  any 
thing  more  than  a  martinet  colonel,  half 
soldier  and  half  preacher.  They  were  unan 
imous  in  prophesying  his  greatness  after 
the  fact,  but  of  the  two  or  three  score  with 
whom  I  talked  on  the  subject  at  the  begin 
ning  of  the  war,  not  one  even  suspected  its 
possibility  until  after  he  had  won  his  so 
briquet  "  Stonewall "  at  Manassas. 

It  is  natural  enough  that  such  a  man 
should  be  credited  in  the  end  with  qualities 
which  he  did  not  possess,  and  that  much 
of  the  praise  awarded  him  should  be  im 
properly  placed  ;  and  in  his  case  this  seems 
to  have  been  the  fact.  He  is  much  more 
frequently  spoken  of  as  the  great  marcher 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     153 

than  as  the  great  fighter  of  the  Confed 
erate  armies,  and  it  is  commonly  said 
that  he  had  an  especial  genius  for  being 
always  on  time.  And  yet  General  Lee 
himself  said  in  the  presence  of  a  distin 
guished  officer  from  whose  lips  I  heard  it, 
that  Jackson  was  by  no  means  so  rapid  a 
marcher  as  Longstreet,  and  that  he  had  an 
unfortunate  habit  of  never  being  on  time. 
Without  doubt  he  was,  next  to  Lee,  the 
greatest  military  genius  we  had,  and  his 
system  of  grand  tactics  was  more  Napo 
leonic  than  was  that  of  any  other  officer  on 
either  side ;  but  it  would  appear  from  this 
that  while  he  has  not  been  praised  beyond 
his  deserving,  he  has  at  least  been  com 
mended  mistakenly. 

The  affection  his  soldiers  bore  him  has 
always  been  an  enigma.  He  was  stern  and 
hard  as  a  disciplinarian,  cold  in  his  man 
ner,  unprepossessing  in  appearance,  and 
utterly  lacking  in  the  apparent  enthusiasm 
which  excites  enthusiasm  in  others.  He 


A  Rebel's  Recollection*. 

had  never  been  able  to  win  the  affection  of 
the  cadets  at  Lexington,  and  had  hardly 
won  even  their  respect.  And  yet  his  sol 
diers  almost  worshiped  him.  Perhaps  it 
was  be  cause  he  was  so  terribly  in  earnest, 
or  it  may  have  been  because  he  was  so 
generally  successful,  —  for  there  are  few 
things  men  admire  more  than  success,  — 
but  whatever  the  cause  was,  no  fact  could 
be  more  evident  than  that  Stonewall  Jack 
son  was  the  most  enthusiastically  loved 
man,  except  Lee,  in  the  Confederate  serv 
ice,  and  that  he  shared  with  Lee  the  gen 
erous  admiration  even  of  his  foes.  His 
strong  religious  bent,  his  devotion  to  a 
form  of  religion  the  most  gloomy,  —  for  his 
Calvinism  amounted  to  very  little  less  than 
fatalism,  and  his  men  called  him  "  old  blue- 
light,"  —  his  strictness  of  life,  and  his  utter 
lack  of  vivacity  and  humor,  would  have 
been  an  impassable  barrier  between  any- 
other  man  and  such  troops  as  he  com 
manded.  He  was  Cromwell  at  the  head  of 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     155 

an  army  composed  of  men  of  the  world,  and 
there  would  seem  to  have  been  nothing  in 
common  between  him  and  them  ;  and  yet 
Cromwell's  psalm-singing  followers  never 
held  their  chief  in  higher  regard  or  heartier 
affection  than  that  with  which  these  rollick 
ing  young  planters  cherished  their  sad-eyed 
and  sober-faced  leader.  They  even  rejoiced 
in  his  extreme  religiosity,  and  held  it  in 
some  sort  a  work  of  supererogation,  suf 
ficient  to  atone  for  their  own  worldly-mind- 
edness.  They  were  never  more  devoted 
to  him  than  when  transgressing  the  very 
principles  upon  which  his  life  was  ordered ; 
and  when  any  of  his  men  indulged  in  dram- 
drinking,  a  practice  from  which  he  always 
rigidly  abstained,  his  health  was  sure  to 
be  the  first  toast  given.  On  one  occa 
sion,  a  soldier  who  had  imbibed  enthu 
siasm  with  his  whisky,  feeling  the  made- 
quacy  of  the  devotion  shown  by  drinking  to 
an  absent  chief,  marched,  canteen  in  hand, 
to  Jackson's  tent,  and  gaining  admission 


156       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

proposed  as  a  sentiment,  "  Here  's  to  you, 
general !  May  I  live  to  see  you  stand  on 
the  highest  pinnacle  of  Mount  Ararat,  and 
hear  you  give  the  command,  '  By  the  right 
of  nations  front  into  empires,  —  worlds, 
right  face  ! '  " 

I  should  not  venture  to  relate  this  anec 
dote  at  all,  did  I  not  get  it  at  first  hands 
from  an  officer  who  was  present  at  the 
time.  It  will  serve,  at  least,  to  show  the 
sentiments  of  extravagant  admiration  with 
which  Jackson's  men  regarded  him,  whether 
it  shall  be  sufficient  to  bring  a  smile  to  the 
reader's  lips  or  not. 

The  first  time  I  ever  saw  General  Ewell, 
I  narrowly  missed  making  it  impossible 
that  there  should  ever  be  a  General  Ewell 
at  all.  He  was  a  colonel  then,  and  was  in 
command  of  the  camp  of  instruction  at 
Ashland.  I  was  posted  as  a  sentinel,  and 
my  orders  were  peremptory  to  permit  no 
body  to  ride  through  the  gate  at  which  I 
was  stationed.  Colonel  Ewell,  dressed  in 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     157 

a  rough  citizen's  suit,  without  side-arms 
or  other  insignia  of  military  rank,  under 
took  to  pass  the  forbidden  portal.  I  com 
manded  him  to  halt,  but  he  cursed  me  in 
stead,  and  attempted  to  ride  over  me. 
Drawing  my  pistol,  cocking  it,  and  placing 
its  muzzle  against  his  breast,  I  replied  with 
more  of  vigor  than  courtesy  in  my  speech, 
and  forced  him  back,  threatening  and  firmly 
intending  to  pull  my  trigger  if  he  should 
resist  in  the  least.  He  yielded  himself  to 
arrest,  and  I  called  the  officer  of  the  guard. 
Ewell  was  livid  with  rage,  and  ordered  the 
officer  to  place  me  in  irons  at  once,  utter 
ing  maledictions  upon  me  which  it  would 
not  do  to  repeat  here.  The  officer  of  the 
guard  was  a  manly  fellow,  however,  and  re 
fused  even  to  remove  me  from  the  post. 

"  The  sentinel  has  done  only  his  duty," 
be  replied,  "  and  if  he  had  shot  you,  Colonel 
Ewell,  you  would  have  had  only  yourself  to 
blame.  I  have  here  your  written  order  that 
the  sentinels  at  this  gate  shall  allow  nobody 


158       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

to  pass  through  it  on  horseback,  on  any 
pretense  whatever ;  and  yet  you  come  in 
citizen's  clothes,  a  stranger  to  the  guard, 
and  try  to  ride  him  down  when  he  insists 
upon  obeying  the  orders  you  have  given 
him." 

The  sequel  to  the  occurrence  proved 
that,  in  spite  of  his  infirm  temper,  Ewell 
was  capable  of  being  a  just  man,  as  he  cer 
tainly  was  a  brave  one.  He  sent  for  me  a 
little  later,  when  he  received  his  commis 
sion  as  a  brigadier,  and  apologizing  for  the 
indignity  with  which  he  had  treated  me, 
offered  me  a  desirable  place  upon  his  staff, 
which,  with  a  still  rankling  sense  of  the  in 
justice  he  had  done  me,  I  declined  to  ac 
cept. 

General  Ewell  was  at  this  time  the  most 
violently  and  elaborately  profane  man  I  ever 
knew.  Elaborately,  I  say,  because  his  pro 
fanity  did  not  consist  of  single  or  even 
double  oaths,  but  was  ingeniously  wrought 
into  whole  sentences.  It  was  profanity 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     159 

which  might  be  parsed,  and  seemed  the 
result  of  careful  study  and  long  practice. 
Later  in  the  war  he  became  a  religious 
man,  but  before  that  time  his  genius  for 
swearing  was  phenomenal.  An  anecdote 
is  told  of  him,  for  the  truth  of  which  I  can 
not  vouch,  but  which  certainly  is  sufficient 
ly  characteristic  to  be  true.  It  is  said  that 
on  one  occasion,  the  firing  having  become 
unusually  heavy,  a  chaplain  who  had  la 
bored  to  convert  the  general,  or  at  least  to 
correct  the  aggressive  character  of  his  wick 
edness,  remarked  that  as  he  could  be  of  no 
service  where  he  was,  he  would  seek  a  less 
exposed  place,  whereupon  Ewell  remarked  : 

"  Why,  chaplain,  you  're  the  most  incon 
sistent  man  I  ever  saw.  You  say  you  're 
anxious  to  get  to  heaven  above  all  things, 
and  now  that  you  've  got  the  best  chance 
you  ever  had  to  go,  you  run  away  from  it 
just  as  if  you  'd  rather  not  make  the  trip, 
after  all." 

I  saw  nothing  of  General  Ewell  after  he 


160       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

left  Ashland,  early  in  the  summer  of  1861, 
until  I  met  him  in  the  winter  of  1864-65 
Some  enormous  rifled  guns  had  been 
mounted  at  Chaffin's  Bluff,  below  Rich 
mond,  and  I  went  from  my  camp  near  by 
to  see  them  tested.  General  Ewell  was 
present,  and  while  the  firing  was  in  prog 
ress  he  received  a  dispatch  saying  that  the 
Confederates  had  been  victorious  in  an  en 
gagement  between  Mackey's  Point  and  Po- 
cotaligo.  As  no  State  was  mentioned  in 
the  dispatch,  and  the  places  named  were 
obscure  ones,  General  Ewell  was  unable  to 
guess  in  what  part  of  the  country  the  action 
had  been  fought.  He  read  the  dispatch 
aloud,  and  asked  if  any  one  present  could 
tell  him  where  Mackey's  Point  and  Poco- 
taligo  were.  Having  served  for  a  consid 
erable  time  on  the  coast  of  South  Carolina, 
I  was  able  to  give  him  the  information  he 
sought.  When  I  had  finished  he  looked  at 
me  intently  for  a  moment,  and  then  asked, 
"  Are  n't  you  the  man  who  came  so  near 
shooting  me  at  Ashland  ?  " 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     161 

I  replied  that  I  was. 

"  I  'm  very  glad  you  did  n't  do  it,"  he 
said. 

"  So  am  I,"  I  replied  ;  and  that  was  all 
that  was  said  on  either  side. 

The  queerest  of  all  the  military  men  I 
met  or  saw  during  the  war  was  General 
W.  H.  H.  Walker,  of  Georgia.  I  saw  very 
little  of  him,  but  that  little  impressed  me 
strongly.  He  was  a  peculiarly  belligerent 
man,  and  if  he  could  have  been  kept  always 
in  battle  he  would  have  been  able  doubtless 
to  keep  the  peace  as  regarded  his  fellows 
and  his  superiors.  As  certain  periods  of 
inaction  are  necessary  in  all  wars,  however, 
General  Walker  was  forced  to  maintain  a 
state  of  hostility  toward  those  around  and 
above  him.  During  the  first  campaign  he 
got  into  a  newspaper  war  with  the  pres 
ident  and  Mr.  Benjamin,  in  which  he  han 
dled  both  of  those  gentlemen  rather  rough- 
.y,  but  failing  to  move  them  from  the  posi 
tion  they  had  taken  with  regard  to  his  pro- 
ii 


162       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

motion,  —  that  being  the  matter  in  dispute, 
—  he  resigned  his  commission,  and  took 
service  as  a  brigadier-general  under  author 
ity  of  the  governor  of  Georgia.  In  this 
capacity  he  was  at  one  time  in  command 
of  the  city  of  Savannah,  and  it  was  there 
that  I  saw  him  for  the  first  and  only  time, 
just  before  the  reduction  of  Fort  Pulaski 
by  General  Gilmore.  The  reading-room  of 
the  Pulaski  House  was  crowded  with  guests 
of  the  hotel  and  evening  loungers  from  the 
city,  when  General  Walker  came  in.  He 
at  once  began  to  talk,  not  so  much  to  the 
one  or  two  gentlemen  with  whom  he  had 
just  shaken  hands,  as  to  the  room  full  of 
strangers  and  the  public  generally.  He 
spoke  in  a  loud  voice  and  with  the  tone 
and  manner  of  a  bully  and  a  braggart, 
which  I  am  told  he  was  not  at  all. 

"  You  people  are  very  brave  at  arms- 
length,"  he  said,  "provided  it  is  a  good 
long  arms-length.  You  are  n't  a  bit  afraid 
of  the  shells  fired  at  Fort  Pulaski,  and  you 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     163 

talk  as  boldly  as  Falstaff  over  his  sack, 
now.  But  what  will  you  do  when  the  Yan 
kee  gun-boats  come  up  the  river  and  be 
gin  to  throw  hot  shot  into  Savannah  ?  I 
know  what  you  '11  do.  You  '11  get  dread 
fully  uneasy  about  your  plate-glass  mirrors 
and  your  fine  furniture  ;  and  I  give  you  fair 
warning  now  that  if  you  want  to  save  your 
mahogany  you  'd  better  be  carting  it  off  up 
country  at  once,  for  I  '11  never  surrender 
anything  more  than  the  ashes  of  Savannah. 
I  '11  stay  here,  and  I  '11  keep  you  here,  till 
every  shingle  burns  and  every  brick  gets 
knocked  into  bits  the  size  of  my  thumb 
nail,  and  then  I  '11  send  the  Yankees  word 
that  there  is  n't  any  Savannah  to  surren 
der.  Now  I  mean  this,  every  word  of 
it.  But  you  don't  believe  it,  and  the  first 
time  a  gun-boat  comes  in  sight  you  '11  all 
come  to  me  and  say,  *  General,  we  can't 
fight  gun-boats  with  any  hope  of  success, 
—  don't  you  think  we  'd  better  surrender  ? ' 
Do  you  know  what  I  '11  do  then  ?  I  Ve  had 


164       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

a  convenient  limb  trimmed  up,  on  the  tree 
in  front  of  my  head-quarters,  and  I  '11  string 
up  every  man  that  dares  say  surrender,  or 
anything  else  beginning  with  an  s" 

And  so  he  went  on  for  an  hour  or  more, 
greatly  to  the  amusement  of  the  crowd.  I 
am  told  by  those  who  knew  him  best  that 
his  statement  of  his  purposes  was  probably 
not  an  exaggerated  one,  and  that  if  he  had 
been  charged  with  the  defense  of  the  city 
against  a  hostile  fleet,  he  would  have  made 
just  such  a  resolute  resistance  as  that 
which  he  promised.  His  courage  and  en 
durance  had  been  abundantly  proved  in 
Mexico,  at  any  rate,  and  nobody  who  knew 
him  ever  doubted  either. 

Another  queer  character,  though  in  a 
very  different  way,  was  General  Ripley, 
who  for  a  long  time  commanded  the  city 
of  Charleston.  He  was  portly  in  person, 
of  commanding  and  almost  pompous  pres 
ence,  and  yet,  when  one  came  to  know  him, 
was  as  easy  and  unassuming  in  manner  as 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     165 

if  he  had  not  been  a  brigadier-general  at 
all.  I  had  occasion  to  call  upon  him  offi 
cially,  a  number  of  times,  and  this  afforded 
me  an  excellent  opportunity  to  study  his 
character  and  manners.  On  the  morning 
after  the  armament  of  Fort  Ripley  was  car 
ried  out  to  the  Federal  fleet  by  the  crew  of 
the  vessel  on  which  it  had  been  placed,  I 
spent  an  hour  or  two  in  General  Ripley's 
head-quarters,  waiting  for  something  or 
other,  though  I  have  quite  forgotten  what. 
I  amused  myself  looking  through  his  tele 
scope  at  objects  in  the  harbor.  Presently 
I  saw  a  ship's  launch,  bearing  a  white  flag, 
approach  Fort  Sumter.  I  mentioned  the 
matter  to  my  companion,  and  General  Rip- 
ley,  overhearing  the  remark,  came  quickly 
to  the  glass.  A  moment  later  he  said  to 
his  signal  operator,  — 

"Tell  Fort  Sumter  if  that's  a  Yankee 
boat  to  burst  her  wide  open,  flag  or  no 
flag."  The  message  had  no  sooner  gone, 
however,  than  it  was  recalled,  and  instruo 


i66       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

tions  more  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of 
civilized  warfare  substituted. 

General  Ripley  stood  less  upon  rule  and 
held  red  tape  in  smaller  regard  than  any 
other  brigadier  I  ever  met.  My  company 
was  at  that  time  an  independent  battery, 
belonging  to  no  battalion  and  subject  to  no 
intermediate  authority  between  that  of  its 
captain  and  that  of  the  commanding  gen 
eral.  It  had  but  two  commissioned  officers 
on  duty,  and  I,  as  its  sergeant-major,  acted 
as  a  sort  of  adjutant,  making  my  reports 
directly  to  General  Ripley's  head-quarters. 
One  day  I  reported  the  fact  that  a  large 
part  of  our  harness  was  unfit  for  further 
use. 

"  Well,  why  don't  you  call  a  board  of  sur 
vey  and  have  it  condemned  ? "  he  asked. 

"  How  can  we,  general  ?  We  do  not 
belong  to  any  battalion,  and  so  have  nobody 
to  call  the  board  or  to  compose  it,  either." 

"  Let  your  captain  call  it  then,  and  put 
your  own  officers  on  it." 


Lee,  Jackson,  and  Others.     167 

"  But  we  have  only  one  officer,  general, 
besides  the  captain,  and  there  must  be 
three  on  the  board,  while  the  officer  calling 
it  cannot  be  one  of  them." 

"  Oh,  the  deuce  ! "  he  replied.  "  What 's 
the  difference  ?  The  harness  ain't  fit  for 
use  and  there 's  plenty  of  new  in  the 
arsenal.  Let  your  captain  call  a  board 
consisting  of  the  lieutenant  and  you  and  a 
sergeant.  It  ain't  legal,  of  course,  to  put 
any  but  commissioned  officers  on,  but  I  tell 
you  to  do  it,  and  one  pair  of  shoulder-straps 
is  worth  more  now  than  a  court-house  full 
of  habeas  corpuses.  Write  'sergeant'  sc 
that  nobody  can  read  it,  and  I  '11  make  my 
clerks  mistake  it  for  '  lieutenant '  in  copy 
ing.  Get  your  board  together,  go  on  to 
say  that  after  a  due  examination,  and  all 
that,  the  board  respectfully  reports  that  it 
finds  the  said  harness  not  worth  a  damn, 
or  words  to  that  effect ;  send  in  your  report 
and  I  '11  approve  it,  and  you  '11  have  a  new 
set  of  harness  in  three  days.  What 's  the 


1 68       A    Rebel's  Recollections. 

use  of  pottering  around  with  technicalities 
when  the  efficiency  of  a  battery  is  at 
stake  ?  We  're  not  lawyers,  but  soldiers." 
The  speech  was  a  peculiarly  character 
istic  one,  and  throughout  his  administration 
of  affairs  in  Charleston,  General  Ripley 
showed  this  disposition  to  promote  the 
good  of  the  service  at  the  expense  of  rou 
tine.  He  was  not  a  good  martinet,  but  he 
was  a  brave,  earnest  man  and  a  fine  officer, 
of  a  sort  of  which  no  army  can  have  too 
many. 


CHAPTER   VII 

SOME    QUEER    PEOPLE. 

GENERALS  would  be  of  small  worth,  in 
deed,  if  there  were  no  lesser  folk  than 
they  in  service,  and  the  interesting  people 
one  meets  in  an  army  do  not  all  wear 
sashes,  by  any  means.  The  composition 
of  the  battery  in  which  I  served  for  a  con 
siderable  time  afforded  me  an  opportunity 
to  study  some  rare  characters,  of  a  sort  not 
often  met  with  in  ordinary  life,  and  as 
these  men  interested  me  beyond  measure, 
I  have  a  mind  to  sketch  a  few  of  them  here 
in  the  hope  that  their  oddities  may  prove 
equally  entertaining  to  my  readers. 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1861,  after  a  sum 
mer  with  Stuart,  circumstances,  with  an 
explanation  of  which  it  is  not  necessary 
now  to  detain  the  reader,  led  me  to  seek  a 


170       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

transfer  to  a  light  battery,  in  which  I  was 
almost  an  entire  stranger.  When  I  joined 
this  new  command,  the  men  were  in  a  state 
of  partial  mutiny,  the  result  of  a  failure  to 
receive  their  pay  and  clothing  allowance. 
The  trouble  was  that  there  was  no  one  in 
the  battery  possessed  of  sufficient  clerical 
skill  to  make  out  a  proper  muster  and  pay 
roll.  Several  efforts  had  been  made,  but  to 
no  purpose,  and  when  I  arrived  the  camp 
was  in  a  state  of  turmoil.  The  men  were 
for  the  most  part  illiterate  mountaineers, 
and  no  explanations  which  the  officers  were 
able  to  give  served  to  disabuse  their  minds 
of  the  thought  that  they  were  being  swin 
dled  in  some  way.  Learning  what  the 
difficulty  was,  I  volunteered  my  services  for 
the  clerical  work  required,  and  two  hours 
after  my  arrival  I  had  the  pleasure  of  pay 
ing  off  the  men  and  restoring  peace  to  the 
camp.  Straightway  the  captain  made  me 
sergeant-major,  and  the  men  wanted  to 
make  me  captain.  The  popularity  won 


Some  Queer  People.  171 

thus  in  the  outset  served  me  many  a  good 
turn,  not  the  least  of  which  I  count  the 
opportunity  it  gave  me  to  study  the  char 
acters  of  the  men,  whose  confidant  and 
adviser  I  became  in  all  matters  of  difficulty 
I  deciphered  the  letters  they  received  from 
home  and  wrote  replies  from  their  dicta 
tion,  and  there  were  parts  of  this  corre 
spondence  which  would  make  my  fortune 
as  a  humorous  writer,  if  I  could  reproduce 
here  the  letters  received  now  and  then. 

The  men,  as  I  have  said,  were  for  the 
most  part  illiterate  mountaineers,  with  just 
a  sufficient  number  of  educated  gentlemen 
among  them  (mostly  officers  and  non-com 
missioned  officers)  to  join  each  other  in  a 
laugh  at  the  oddity  of  the  daily  life  in  the 
camp.  The  captain  had  been  ambitious  at 
one  time  of  so  increasing  the  company  as 
to  make  a  battalion  of  it,  and  to  that  end 
bad  sought  recruits  in  all  quarters.  Among 
others  he  had  enlisted  seven  genuine  ruf 
fians  whom  he  had  found  in  a  Richmond 


172       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

jail,  and  who  enlisted  for  the  sake  of  a 
release  from  durance.  These  men  formed 
a  little  clique  by  themselves,  a  sort  of 
miniature  New  York  sixth  ward  society, 
which  afforded  me  a  singularly  interesting 
social  study,  of  a  kind  rarely  met  with  by 
any  but  home  missionaries  and  police  au 
thorities.  There  were  enough  of  them  to 
form  a  distinct  criminal  class,  so  that  I  had 
opportunity  to  study  their  life  as  a  whole, 
and  not  merely  the  phenomena  presented 
by  isolated  specimens. 

All  of  these  seven  men  had  seen  service 
somewhere,  and  except  as  regarded  turbu 
lence  and  utter  unmanageability  they  were 
excellent  soldiers.  Jack  Delaney,  or  "  one- 
eyed  Jack  Delaney,"  as  he  was  commonly 
called,  was  a  tall,  muscular,  powerful  fellow, 
who  had  lost  an  eye  in  a  street  fight,  and 
was  quite  prepared  to  sacrifice  the  other  in 
the  same  way  at  any  moment.  Tommy 
Martin  was  smaller  and  plumper  than  Jack, 
but  not  one  whit  less  muscular  or  less  des- 


Some  Queer  People.  173 

perately  belligerent.  Tim  Considine  was 
simply  a  beauty.  He  was  not  more  than 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  well-built,  with  a 
fair,  pearly,  pink  and  white  complexion, 
regular  features,  exquisite  eyes,  and  a  sin 
gularly  shapely  and  well-poised  head.  His 
face  on  any  woman's  shoulders  would  have 
made  her  a  beauty  and  a  belle  in  a  Brook 
lyn  drawing-room.  I  group  these  three 
together  because  they  are  associated  with 
each  other  in  my*mind.  They  messed  to 
gether,  and  occupied  one  tent.  Never  a 
day  passed  which  brought  with  it  no  battle 
royal  between  two  or  all  three  of  them 
These  gentlemen,  —  for  that  is  what  they 
uniformly  called  themselves,  though  they 
pronounced  the  word  "  gints," — were  born 
in  Baltimore.  I  have  their  word  for  this, 
else  I  should  never  have  suspected  the  fact. 
Their  names  were  of  Hibernian  mold.  They 
^poke  the  English  language  with  as  pretty 
a  brogue  as  ever  echoed  among  the  hills  of 
Galway.  They  were  much  given  to  such 


174       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

expletives  as  "  faith "  and  "  be  me  sowl," 
and  "  be  jabers,"  and  moreover  they  were 
always  "  afther  "  doing  something  ;  but  they 
were  born  in  Baltimore,  nevertheless,  for 
they  solemnly  told  me  so. 

I  am  wholly  unable  to  give  the  reader 
any  connected  account  of  the  adventures 
and  life  struggles  through  which  these  men 
had  passed,  for  the  reason  that  I  was  never 
able  to  win  their  full  and  unreserved  con 
fidence  ;  but  I  caught  glimpses  of  their  past, 
here  and  there,  from  which  I  think  it  safe 
to  assume  that  their  personal  histories  had 
been  of  a  dramatic,  not  to  say  of  a  sensa 
tional  sort.  My  battery  was  sent  one  day 
to  Bee's  Creek,  on  the  South  Carolina 
coast,  to  meet  an  anticipated  advance  of  the 
enemy.  No  enemy  came,  however,  and  we 
lay  there  on  the  sand,  under  a  scorching 
sub-tropical  sun,  in  a  swarm  of  sand-flies  so 
dense  that  many  of  our  horses  died  of  their 
stings,  while  neither  sleep  nor  rest  was 
possible  to  the  men.  A  gun-boat  lay  just 


Some  Queer  People.  175 

out  of  reach  beyond  a  point  in  the  inlet, 
annoying  us  by  throwing  at  us  an  occa 
sional  shell  of  about  the  size  and  shape  of 
a  street  lamp.  Having  a  book  with  me  I 
sought  a  place  under  a  caisson  for  the  sake 
of  the  shade,  and  spent  an  hour  or  two  in 
reading.  While  I  was  there,  Jack  Delaney 
and  Tommy  Martin,  knowing  nothing  of 
my  presence,  took  seats  on  the  ammunition 
chests,  and  fell  to  talking. 

"  An'  faith,  Tommy,"  said  Jack,  "  an'  it 
is  n't  this  sort  of  foightin'  I  'm  afther  loikin' 
at  all,  bad  luck  to  it." 

"An'  will  ye  tell  me,  Jack,"  said  his 
companion,  "  what  sort  of  foightin'  it  is,  ye 
loikes  ? " 

"  Ah,  Tommy,  it 's  mesilf  that  loikes  the 
raal  foightin'.  Give  me  an  open  sea,  an' 
close  quarthers,  an'  a  black  flag,  Tommy, 
an*  that 's  the  sort  of  foightin'  I  'm  afther 
'oikin',  sure." 

"A  -  an'  I  believe  it 's  a  poirate  ye  are, 
Jack." 


176       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

"  You  're  roight,  Tommy  ;  it 's  a  poirate 
I  am,  ivery  inch  o'  me  !  " 

Here  was  a  glimpse  of  the  man's  char 
acter  which  proved  also  a  hint  of  his  life 
story,  as  I  afterwards  learned.  He  had 
been  a  pirate,  and  an  English  court,  discov 
ering  the  fact,  had  "ordered  his  funeral," 
as  he  phrased  it,  but  by  some  means  or 
other  he  had  secured  a  pardon  on  condition 
of  his  enlistment  in  the  British  navy,  from 
which  he  had  deserted  at  the  first  oppor 
tunity.  Jack  was  very  much  devoted  to 
his  friends,  and  especially  to  those  above 
him  in  social  or  military  rank  ;  and  a  more 
loyal  fellow  I  never  knew.  The  captain  of 
the  battery  and  I  were  tent  mates  and 
mess  mates,  and  although  we  kept  a  com 
petent  negro  servant,  Jack  insisted  upon 
blacking  our  boots,  stretching  our  tent, 
brushing  our  clothes,  looking  after  our  fire, 
and  doing  a  hundred  other  services  of  the 
sort,  for  which  he  could  never  be  persuaded 
*o  accept  compensation  of  any  kind. 


Some  Queer  People.  177 

When  we  arrived  in  Charleston  for  the 
first  time,  on  our  way  to  the  post  assigned 
us  at  Coosawhatchie,  we  were  obliged  to 
remain  a  whole  day  in  the  city,  awaiting 
transportation.  Knowing  the  temper  of 
our  "  criminal  class,"  we  were  obliged  to 
confine  all  the  men  strictly  within  camp 
boundaries,  lest  our  Baltimore  Irishmen 
and  their  fellows  should  get  drunk  and  give 
us  trouble.  We  peremptorily  refused  to 
let  any  of  the  men  pass  the  line  of  sentinels, 
but  Jack  Delaney,  being  in  sad  need  of  a 
pair  of  boots,  was  permitted  to  go  into  the 
city  in  company  with  the  captain.  That 
officer  guarded  him  carefully,  and  as  they 
were  returning  to  camp  the  captain,  think 
ing  that  there  could  be  no  danger  in  allow 
ing  the  man  one  dram,  invited  him  to  drink 
at  a  hotel  counter. 

"  Give  us  your  very  best  whisky,"  he 
said  to  the  man  behind  the  bar ;  whereupon 
that  functionary  placed  a  decanter  and  two 
glasses  before  them. 

12 


1 78       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

Jack's  one  eye  flashed  fire  instantly, 
and  jumping  upon  the  counter  he  screamed, 
"  What  d'  ye  mean,  ye  bloody  spalpeen,  by 
insultin'  me  captain  in  that  way  ?  I  '11 
teach  ye  your  manners,  ye  haythen."  The 
captain  could  not  guess  the  meaning  of  the 
Irishman's  wrath,  but  he  interfered  for  the 
protection  of  the  frightened  servitor,  and 
asked  Jack  what  he  meant. 

"  What  do  I  mean  ?  An'  sure  an*  I  mean 
to  break  his  bit  of  a  head,  savin'  your  pres 
ence,  captain.  I  '11  teach  him  not  to  insult 
me  captain  before  me  very  eyes,  by  givin' 
him  the  same  bottle  he  gives  Jack  Delaney 
to  drink  out  of.  An'  sure  an'  me  moother 
learnt  me  betther  manners  nor  to  presume 
to  drink  from  the  same  bottle  with  me 
betthers." 

The  captain  saved  the  bar-tender  from 
the  effects  of  Jack's  wrath,  but  failed  utterly 
to  convince  that  well-bred  Irish  gentleman 
that  no  offense  against  good  manners  had 
been  committed.  He  refused  to  drink  from 


Some  Queer  People.  179 

the  "raptain's  bottle,"  and  a  separate  de 
canter  was  provided  for  him. 

On  another  occasion  Jack  went  with  one 
of  the  officers  to  a  tailor's  shop,  and,  with 
out  apparent  cause,  knocked  the  knight  of 
the  shears  down  and  was  proceeding  to 
beat  him,  when  the  officer  commanded  him 
to  desist. 

"  An'  sure  if  your  honor  says  he 's  had 
enough,  I  '11  quit,  but  I  'd  loike  to  murdher 
him." 

Upon  being  questioned  as  to  the  cause 
of  his  singular  behavior,  he  explained  that 
fhe  tailor  had  shown  unpardonably  bad 
manners  by  keeping  his  hat  on  his  head 
while  taking  the  lieutenant's  measure. 

These  men  were  afraid  of  nothing  and 
respected  nothing  but  rank ;  but  their  re 
gard  for  that  was  sufficiently  exaggerated 
perhaps  to  atone  for  their  short-comings  in 
other  respects.  A  single  chevron  on  a 
man's  sleeve  made  them  at  once  his  obedi 
ent  servants,  and  never  once,  even  in  their 


i8o       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

cups,  did  they  resist  constituted  authority, 
directly  asserted.  For  general  rules  they 
had  no  respect  whatever.  Anything  which 
assumed  the  form  of  law  they  violated  as  a 
matter  of  course,  if  not,  as  I  suspect,  as  a 
matter  of  conscience  ;  but  the  direct  com 
mand  of  even  a  corporal  was  held  binding 
always.  Jack  Delaney,  who  never  diso 
beyed  any  order  delivered  to  him  in  person, 
used  to  swim  the  Ashley  River  every  night, 
at  imminent  risk  of  being  eaten  by  sharks, 
chiefly  because  it  was  a  positive  violation 
of  orders  to  cross  at  all  from  our  camp  on 
Wappoo  Creek  to  Charleston. 

Tommy  Martin  and  Tim  Considine  were 
Dosom  friends,  and  inseparable  companions. 
They  fought  each  other  frequently,  but 
these  little  episodes  worked  no  ill  to  their 
friendship.  One  day  they  quarreled  about 
something,  and  Considine,  drawing  a  huge 
knife  from  his  belt,  rushed  upon  Martin 
with  evident  murderous  intent.  Martin, 
planting  himself  firmly,  dealt  his  antagonist 


Some  Queer  People.  181 

a  blow  exactly  between  the  eyes,  which  laid 
him  at  full  length  on  the  ground.  I  ran  at 
once  to  command  the  peace,  but  before  I 
got  to  the  scene  of  action  I  heard  Considine 
call  out,  from  his  supine  position,  — 

"  Bully  for  you,  Tommy  !  I  niver  knew 
a  blow  better  delivered  in  me  loife  ! "  And 
that  ended  the  dispute. 

One  night,  after  taps,  a  fearful  hubbub 
arose  in  the  Irish  quarter  of  the  camp,  and 
running  to  the  place,  the  captain,  a  corporal, 
and  I  managed  to  separate  the  combatants  ; 
but  as  Jack  Delaney  had  a  great  butcher 
knife  in  his  hands  with  which  it  appeared 
he  had  already  severely  cut  another  Irish 
man,  Dan  Gorman  by  name,  we  thought 
it  best  to  bind  him  with  a  prolonge. 
He  submitted  readily,  lying  down  on  the 
ground  to  be  tied.  While  we  were  draw 
ing  the  rope  around  him,  Gorman,  a  giant 
in  size  and  strength,  leaned  over  us  and 
dashed  a  brick  with  all  his  force  into  the 
prostrate  man's  face.  Had  it  struck  his 


1 82       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

skull  it  must  have  killed  him  instantly,  as 
indeed  we  supposed  for  a  time  that  it  had. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  that,  sir  ? " 
asked  the  captain,  seizing  Gorman  by  the 
collar. 

Pointing  to  a  fearful  gash  in  his  own 
neck,  the  man  replied,  — 

"  Don't  ye  see  I'm  a  dead  man,  captain  ? 
An'  sure  an'  do  ye  think  I'm  goiri  to  hell 
widout  me  pardner?  " 

The  tone  of  voice  in  which  the  question 
was  asked  clearly  indicated  that  in  his 
view  nothing  could  possibly  be  more  utterly 
preposterous  than  such  a  supposition. 

Charley  Lear  belonged  to  this  party, 
though  he  was  not  a  Celt,  but  an  English 
man.  Charley  was  a  tailor  by  trade  and 
a  desperado  in  practice.  He  had  kept  a 
bar  in  Vicksburg,  had  dug  gold  in  Cali 
fornia,  and  had  "  roughed  it "  in  various 
other  parts  of  the  world.  His  was  a 
scarred  breast,  showing  seven  knife  thrusts 
and  the  marks  of  two  bullets,  one  of  which 


Some  Queer  People.  183 

had  passed  entirely  through  him.  And 
yet  he  was  in  perfect  health  and  strength. 
He  was  a  man  of  considerable  intelligence 
and  fair  education,  whose  association  with 
ruffians  was  altogether  a  matter  of  choice. 
He  was  in  no  sense  a  criminal,  I  think,  and 
while  I  knew  him,  at  least,  was  perfectly 
peaceful.  But  he  liked  rough  company 
and  sought  it  diligently,  taking  the  conse 
quences  when  they  came.  He  professed 
great  regard  and  even  affection  for  me, 
because  I  had  done  him  a  rather  important 
service  once. 

Finding  it  impossible  to  govern  these 
men  without  subjecting  the  rest  of  the 
company  to  a  much  severer  discipline  than 
was  otherwise  necessary  or  desirable,  we 
secured  the  transfer  of  our  ruffians  to  an 
other  command  in  the  fall  of  1862,  and  I 
saw  no  more  of  any  of  them  until  after  the 
close  of  the  war.  I  went  into  a  tailor's 
shop  in  Memphis  one  day,  during  the  win 
ter  of  1865-66,  to  order  a  suit  of  clothing. 


1 84       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

After  selecting  the  goods  I  was  asked  to 
step  up-stairs  to  be  measured.  While  the 
cutter  was  using  his  tape  upon  me,  one 
of  the  journeymen  on  the  great  bench  at 
the  end  of  the  room  suddenly  dropped 
his  work,  and,  bounding  forward,  literally 
clasped  me  in  his  arms,  giving  me  a  hug 
which  a  grizzly  bear  might  be  proud  of.  It 
was  Charley  Lear,  of  course,  and  I  had  the 
utmost  difficulty  in  refusing  his  offer  to  pay 
for  the  goods  and  make  my  clothes  himself 
without  charge. 

Our  assortment  of  queer  people  was  a 
varied  one,  and  among  the  rest  there  were 
two  ex-circus  actors,  Jack  Hawkins  and 
Colonel  Denton,  to  wit.  Hawkins  was  an 
inoffensive  and  even  a  timid  fellow,  whose 
delight  it  was  to  sing  bold  robber  songs  in 
the  metallic  voice  peculiar  to  vocalists  of 
the  circus.  There  was  something  inex 
pressibly  ludicrous  in  the  contrast  between 
the  bloody  -  mindedness  of  his  songs  and 
the  gentle  shyness  and  timidity  of  the 


Some  Queer  People.  185 

man  who  sang  them.  Everybody  domi 
neered  over  him,  and  he  was  especially 
oppressed  in  the  presence  of  our  other 
ex-clown,  whose  assumption  of  superior 
wisdom  and  experience  often  overpowered 
stronger  men  than  poor  John  Hawkins  ever 
was.  Denton  was  one  of  those  men  who 
are  sure,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  become 
either  "  colonel "  or  "judge."  He  was  sixty- 
five  years  old  when  I  first  knew  him,  and 
had  been  "  the  colonel "  longer  than  any 
body  could  remember.  He  was  of  good 
parentage,  and  until  he  ran  away  with  a 
circus  at  the  age  of  eleven  had  lived  among 
genteel  people.  His  appearance  and  man 
ner  were  imposing  always,  and  never  more 
so  than  when  he  was  drunk.  He  buttoned 
his  coat  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  is  about 
to  ride  over  broad  ancestral  acres,  and  ate 
his  dinner,  whatever  it  might  consist  of, 
with  all  the  dignity  of  a  host  who  does  his 
guests  great  honor  in  entertaining  the»~ 
He  was  an  epicure  in  his  tastes,  oi  course, 


1 86       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

and  delighted  to  describe  peculiarly  well- 
prepared  dinners  which  he  said  he  had 
eaten  in  company  with  especially  distin 
guished  gentlemen.  He  was  an  expert, 
too,  he  claimed,  in  the  preparation  of  salads 
and  the  other  arts  of  a  like  nature  in  which 
fine  gentlemen  like  to  excel  even  profes 
sional  cooks.  When  rations  happened  to 
be  more  than  ordinarily  limited  in  quantity 
or  worse  than  usual  in  quality,  Denton  was 
sure  to  visit  various  messes  while  they  were 
at  dinner,  and  regale  them  with  a  highly 
wrought  description  of  an  imaginary  feast 
from  which  he  would  profess  to  have  risen 
ten  minutes  before. 

"You  ought  to  have  dined  with  me  to 
day,"  he  would  say.  "  I  had  a  deviled 
leg  of  turkey,  and  some  beautiful  broiled 
oysters  with  Spanish  olives.  I  never  eat 
broiled  oysters  without  olives.  You  try  it 
sometime,  and  you  '11  never  regret  it.  Then 
I  had  a  stuffed  wild  goose's  liver.  Did  you 
ever  eat  one  ?  Well,  you  don't  know  what 


Some  Queer  People.  187 

a  real  titbit  is,  then.  Not  stuffed  in  the 
ordinary  way,  but  stuffed  scientifically  and 
cooked  in  a  way  you  never  saw  it  done  be 
fore."  And  thus  he  would  go  on,  naming 
impossible  viands  and  describing  prepos 
terous  processes  of  cookery,  until  "  cooked 
in  a  way  you  never  saw  it  done  before " 
became  a  proverb  in  the  camp.  The  old 
sinner  would  do  all  this  on  an  empty  stom 
ach  too,  and  I  sometimes  fancied  he  found 
in  the  delights  of  his  imaginary  banquets 
some  compensation  for  the  short  rations 
and  hard  fare  of  his  actual  experience. 

He  was  in  his  glory,  however,  only  when 
he  was  away  from  camp  and  among  stran 
gers.  He  always  managed  to  impress  peo 
ple  who  didn't  know  him  with  his  great 
wealth  and  prominence.  I  overheard  him 
once,  in  the  office  of  the  Charleston  Hotel, 
inviting  some  gentlemen  to  visit  and  dine 
with  him. 

"  Come  out  this  evening,"  he  said,  "  to 
my  place  in  Charleston  Neck,  and  take  a 


1 88       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

bachelor  dinner  with  me.  I  've  just  got 
some  duck  from  Virginia,  —  canvas -back, 
you  know,  —  and  my  steward  will  be  sure  to 
have  something  else  good  on  hand.  I  Ve 
got  some  good  madeira  too,  that  I  imported 
myself.  Now  you'll  not  disappoint  me, 
will  you  ?  And  after  dinner  we  '11  have  a 
turn  at  billiards  :  I  've  just  had  my  tables 
overhauled.  But  you  '11  have  to  excuse  me 
long  enough  now  for  me  to  ride  down  and 
tell  the  major  to  take  care  of  things  in  camp 
till  morning." 

And  with  that  he  gave  them  an  address 
in  the  aristocratic  quarter  of  Charleston, 
leaving  them  to  meditate  upon  the  good 
luck  they  had  fallen  upon  in  meeting  this 
wealthy  and  hospitable  "  colonel." 

Denton  was  an  inveterate  gambler,  and 
was  in  the  habit  of  winning  a  good  deal  of 
money  from  the  men  after  pay-day.  One 
day  he  gave  some  sound  advice  to  a  young 
nan  from  whom  he  had  just  taken  a  watch 
in  settlement  of  a  score. 


Some  Queer  People.  189 

"  Now  let  me  give  you  some  advice, 
Bill,"  he  said.  "  I  've  seen  a  good  deal  of 
this  kind  of  thing,  and  I  know  what  I  'm 
talking  about.  You  play  fair  now,  and  you 
always  lose.  You  '11  win  after  a  while  if 
you  keep  on,  but  I  tell  you,  Bill,  nobody 
ever  can  win  at  cards  without  cheating. 
You  '11  cheat  a  little  after  a  while,  and 
you  '11  cheat  a  good  deal  before  you  Ve  done 
with  it.  You  'd  better  quit  now,  while 
you  're  honest,  because  you  '11  cheat  if  you 
keep  on,  and  when  a  man  cheats  at  cards 
he  '11  steal,  Bill.  /  speak  from  experience? 
All  of  which  impressed  me  as  a  singularly 
frank  confession  under  the  circumstances. 

Among  other  odd  specimens  we  had  in 
our  battery  the  most  ingenious  malingerer 
I  ever  heard  of.  He  was  in  service  four 
years,  drew  his  pay  regularly,  was  of  robust 
frame  and  in  perfect  health  always,  and  yet 
during  the  whole  time  he  was  never  off  the 
sick-list  for  a  single  day.  His  capacity  to 
endure  contempt  was  wholly  unlimited,  else 


190       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

he  would  have  been  shamed  by  the  gibes 
of  the  men,  the  sneers  of  the  surgeons,  and 
the  denunciations  of  the  officers,  into  some 
show,  at  least,  of  a  disposition  to  do  duty. 
He  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  time  in 
hospital,  never  staying  in  camp  a  moment 
longer  than  he  was  obliged  to  do.  When 
discharged,  as  a  well  man,  from  one  hos 
pital,  he  would  start  toward  his  command, 
and  continue  in  that  direction  till  he  came 
to  another  infirmary,  when  he  would  have 
a  relapse  at  once,  and  gain  admission  there. 
Discharged  again  he  would  repeat  the  proc 
ess  at  the  next  hospital,  and  one  day  near 
the  end  of  the  war  he  counted  up  some 
thing  like  a  hundred  different  post  and 
general  hospitals  of  which  he  had  been  an 
inmate,  while  he  had  been  admitted  to 
some  of  them  more  than  half  a  dozen  times 
each.  The  surgeons  resorted  to  a  variety 
of  expedients  by  which  to  get  rid  of  him. 
They  burned  his  back  with  hot  coppers  ; 
gave  him  the  most  nauseous  mixtures  ;  put 


Some  Queer  People.  191 

him  on  the  lowest  possible  diet ;  treated 
him  to  cold  shower-baths  four  or  five  times 
daily  ;  and  did  everything  else  they  could 
think  of  to  drive  him  from  the  hospitals, 
but  all  to  no  purpose.  In  camp  it  was 
much  the  same.  On  the  morning  after  his 
arrival  from  hospital  he  would  wake  up 
with  some  totally  new  ache,  and  report 
himself  upon  the  sick-list.  There  was  no 
way  by  which  to  conquer  his  obstinacy, 
and,  as  I  have  said,  he  escaped  duty  to  the 
last. 

Another  curious  case,  and  one  which  is 
less  easily  explained,  was  that  of  a  much 
more  intelligent  man,  who  for  more  than  a 
year  feigned  every  conceivable  disease,  in 
the  hope  that  he  might  be  discharged  the 
service.  One  or  two  of  us  amused  our 
selves  with  his  case,  by  mentioning  in  his 
presence  the  symptoms  of  some  disease  of 
which  he  had  never  heard,  the  surgeon 
furnishing  us  the  necessary  information, 
and  in  every  case  he  had  the  disease  within 


192       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

less  than  twenty-four  hours.  Finally,  and 
this  was  the  oddest  part  of  the  matter, 
he  gave  up  the  attempt,  recovered  his 
health  suddenly,  and  became  one  of  the 
very  best  soldiers  in  the  battery,  a  man 
always  ready  for  duty,  and  always  faithful 
in  its  discharge.  He  was  made  a  corporal 
and  afterwards  a  sergeant,  and  there  was 
no  better  in  the  battery. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RED    TAPE. 

THE  history  of  the  Confederacy,  when  ix 
shall  be  fully  and  fairly  written,  will  appear 
the  story  of  a  dream  to  those  who  shall 
read  it,  and  there  are  parts  of  it  at  least 
which  already  seem  a  nightmare  to  those 
of  us  who  helped  make  it.  Founded  upon 
a  constitution  which  jealously  withheld 
from  it  nearly  all  the  powers  of  govern 
ment,  without  even  the  poor  privilege  of 
existing  beyond  the  moment  when  some 
one  of  the  States  composing  it  should  see 
fit  to  put  it  to  death,  the  Richmond  govern 
ment  nevertheless  grew  speedily  into  a  des 
potism,  and  for  four  years  wielded  absolute 
power  over  an  obedient  and  uncomplaining 
people.  It  tolerated  no  questioning,  brooked 
no  resistance,  listened  to  no  remonstrance. 


194       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

It  levied  taxes  of  an  extraordinary  kind 
upon  a  people  already  impoverished  almost 
to  the  point  of  starvation.  It  made  of  every 
man  a  soldier,  and  extended  indefinitely 
every  man's  term  of  enlistment.  Under 
pretense  of  enforcing  the  conscription  law 
it  established  an  oppressive  system  ot  domi 
ciliary  visits.  To  preserve  order  and  pre 
vent  desertion  it  instituted  and  maintained 
a  system  of  guards  and  passports,  not  less 
obnoxious,  certainly,  than  the  worst  thing 
of  the  sort  ever  devised  by  the  most  pater 
nal  of  despotisms.  In  short,  a  government 
constitutionally  weak  beyond  all  precedent 
was  able  for  four  years  to  exercise  in  a 
particularly  offensive  way  all  the  powers 
of  absolutism,  and  that,  too,  over  a  people 
who  had  been  living  under  republican  rule 
for  generations.  That  such  a  thing  was 
possible  seems  at  the  first  glance  a  marvel, 
but  the  reasons  for  it  are  not  far  to  seek 
Despotisms  usually  ground  themselves  upon 
the  theories  of  extreme  democracy,  for  one 


Red  Tape.  195 

thing,  and  in  this  case  the  consciousness  of 
the  power  to  dissolve  and  destroy  the  gov 
ernment  at  will  made  the  people  tolerant  of 
its  encroachments  upon  personal  and  State 
rights  ;  the  more  especially,  as  the  presid 
ing  genius  of  the  despotism  was  the  man 
who  had  refused  a  promotion  to  the  rank 
of  brigadier-general  of  volunteers  during 
the  Mexican  war,  on  the  ground  that  the 
general  government  could  not  grant  such  a 
commission  without  violating  the  rights  of 
a  State.  The  despotism  of  a  government 
presided  over  by  a  man  so  devoted  as  he 
to  State  rights  seemed  less  dangerous  than 
it  might  otherwise  have  appeared.  His 
theory  was  so  excellent  that  people  par 
doned  his  practice.  It  is  of  some  parts  of 
that  practice  that  we  shall  speak  in  the 
present  chapter. 

Nothing  could  possibly  be  idler  than 
speculation  upon  what  might  have  been  ac 
complished  with  the  resources  of  the  South 
if  they  had  been  properly  economized  and 


196       A  Rebel's  RecoUeciions. 

wisely  used.  And  yet  every  Southern  man 
must  feel  tempted  to  indulge  in  some  such 
speculation  whenever  he  thinks  of  the  sub 
ject  at  all,  and  remembers,  as  he  must,  how 
shamefully  those  resources  were  wasted 
and  how  clumsily  they  were  handled  in 
every  attempt  to  use  them  in  the  prosecu 
tion  of  the  war.  The  army  was  composed, 
as  we  have  seen  in  a  previous  chapter,  of 
excellent  material ;  and  under  the  influence 
of  field  service  it  soon  became  a  very  effi 
cient  body  of  well-drilled  and  well-dis 
ciplined  men.  The  skill  of  its  leaders  is 
matter  of  history,  too  well  known  to  need 
comment  here.  But  the  government  con 
trolling  army  and  leaders  was  both  passive 
ly  and  actively  incompetent  in  a  surprising 
degree.  It  did,  as  nearly  as  possible,  all 
those  things  which  it  ought  not  to  have 
done,  at  the  same  time  developing  a  really 
marvelous  genius  for  leaving  undone  those 
things  which  it  ought  to  have  done.  The 
story  of  its  incompetence  and  its  presump- 


Red  Tape.  197 

tion,  if  it  could  be  adequately  told,  would 
read  like  a  romance.  Its  weakness  para 
lyzed  the  army  and  people,  and  its  weak 
ness  was  the  less  hurtful  side  of  its  char 
acter.  Its  full  capacity  for  ill  was  best 
seen  in  the  extraordinary  strength  it  devel 
oped  whenever  action  of  a  wrong-headed 
sort  could  work  disaster,  and  the  only  won 
der  is  that  with  such  an  administration  at 
its  back  the  Confederate  army  was  able  to 
keep  the  field  at  all.  I  have  already  had  oc 
casion  to  explain  that  the  sentiment  of  the 
South  made  it  the  duty  of  every  man  who 
could  bear  arms  to  go  straight  to  the  front 
and  to  stay  there.  The  acceptance  of  any 
less  actively  military  position  than  that  of 
a  soldier  in  the  field  was  held  to  be  little 
less  than  a  confession  of  cowardice;  and 
cowardice,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Southerners, 
is  the  one  sin  which  may  not  be  pardoned 
either  in  this  world  or  the  next.  The 
strength  of  this  sentiment  it  is  difficult  for 
anybody  who  did  not  live  in  its  midst  to 


198       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

conceive,  and  its  effect  was  to  make  woithy 
men  spurn  everything  like  civic  position. 
To  go  where  the  bullets  were  whistling  was 
the  one  course  open  to  gentlemen  who  held 
their  honor  sacred  and  their  reputation  dear. 
And  so  the  offices  in  Richmond  and  else 
where,  the  bureaus  of  every  sort,  on  the 
proper  conduct  of  which  so  much  depend 
ed,  were  filled  with  men  willing  to  be 
sneered  at  as  dwellers  in  "  bomb-proofs  " 
and  holders  of  "  life  insurance  policies." 

Nor  were  the  petty  clerkships  the  only 
positions  which  brought  odium  upon  their 
incumbents.  If  an  able-bodied  man  ac 
cepted  even  a  seat  in  Congress,  he  did  so 
at  peril  of  his  reputation  for  patriotism  and 
courage,  and  very  many  of  the  men  whose 
wisdom  was  most  needed  in  that  body 
positively  refused  to  go  there  at  the  risk 
of  losing  a  chance  to  be  present  with  their 
regiments  in  battle.  Under  the  circum 
stances,  no  great  degree  of  strength  or  wis 
dom  was  to  be  looked  for  at  the  hands  oi 


Red  Tape.  1 99 

Congress,  and  certainly  that  assemblage  of 
gentlemen  has  never  been  suspected  of 
showing  much  of  either ;  while  the  admin 
istrative  machinery  presided  over  by  the 
small  officials  and  clerks  who  crowded 
Richmond  was  at  once  a  wonder  of  compli 
cation  and  a  marvel  of  inefficiency. 

But,  if  we  may  believe  the  testimony  of 
those  who  were  in  position  to  know  the 
facts,  the  grand  master  of  incapacity,  whose 
hand  was  felt  everywhere,  was  President 
Davis  himself.  Not  content  with  perpetu 
ally  meddling  in  the  smallest  matters  of 
detail,  and  prescribing  the  petty  routine  of 
office  work  in  the  bureau,  he  interfered, 
either  directly  or  through  his  personal  sub 
ordinates,  with  military  operations  which 
no  man,  not  present  with  the  army,  could 
be  competent  to  control,  and  which  he, 
probably,  was  incapable  of  justly  compre 
hending  in  any  case.  With  the  history  of 
his  quarrels  with  the  generals  in  the  field, 
and  the  paralyzing  effect  they  had  upon 


200       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

military  operations,  the  public  is  already 
familiar.  Leaving  things  of  that  nature  to 
the  historian,  I  confine  myself  to  smaller 
matters,  my  purpose  being  merely  to  give 
the  reader  an  idea  of  the  experiences  of  a 
Confederate  soldier,  and  to  show  him  Con 
federate  affairs  as  they  looked  when  seen 
from  the  inside. 

I  can  hardly  hope  to  make  the  ex-soldier 
of  the  Union  understand  fully  how  we  on 
the  other  side  were  fed  in  the  field.  He 
fought  and  marched  with  a  skilled  commis 
sariat  at  his  back,  and,  for  his  further  staff 
of  comfort,  had  the  Christian  and  Sanitary 
commissions,  whose  handy  tin  cups  and 
other  camp  conveniences  came  to  us  only 
through  the  uncertain  and  irregular  channel 
of  abandonment  and  capture  ;  and  unless 
his  imagination  be  a  vivid  one,  he  will  not 
easily  conceive  the  state  of  our  commis 
sariat  or  the  privations  we  suffered  as  a 
consequence  of  its  singularly  bad  manage 
ment.  The  first  trouble  was,  that  we  had 


Red  Tape.  201 

for  a  commissary-general  a  crotchety  doc 
tor,  some  of  whose  acquaintances  had  for 
years  believed  him  insane.  Aside  from 
his  suspected  mental  aberration,  and  the 
crotchets  which  had  made  his  life  already 
a  failure,  he  knew  nothing  whatever  of  the 
business  belonging  to  the  department  un 
der  his  control,  his  whole  military  experi 
ence  having  consisted  of  a  few  years'  serv 
ice  as  a  lieutenant  of  cavalry  in  one  of  the 
Territories,  many  years  before  the  date  of 
his  appointment  as  chief  of  subsistence  in 
the  Confederacy.  Wholly  without  experi 
ence  to  guide  him,  he  was  forced  to  evolve 
from  his  own  badly  balanced  intellect  what 
ever  system  he  should  adopt,  and  from  the 
beginning  of  the  war  until  the  early  part 
of  the  year  1865,  the  Confederate  armies 
were  forced  to  lean  upon  this  broken  reed 
in  the  all-important  matter  of  a  food  supply. 
The  generals  commanding  in  the  field,  we 
are  told  on  the  very  highest  authority, 
protested,  suggested,  remonstrated  almost 


202       A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

daily,  but  their  remonstrances  were  un 
heeded  and  their  suggestions  set  at  naught. 
At  Manassas,  where  the  army  was  well- 
nigh  starved  out  in  the  very  beginning  of 
the  war,  food  might  have  been  abundant 
but  for  the  obstinacy  of  this  one  man.  On 
our  left  lay  a  country  unsurpassed,  and  al 
most  unequaled,  in  productiveness.  It  was 
rich  in  grain  and  meat,  these  being  its 
special  products.  A  railroad,  with  next  to 
nothing  to  do,  penetrated  it,  and  its  stores 
of  food  were  nearly  certain  to  be  exposed 
to  the  enemy  before  any  other  part  of  the 
country  should  be  conquered.  The  obvious 
duty  of  the  commissary-general,  therefore, 
was  to  draw  upon  that  section  for  the 
supplies  which  were  both  convenient  and 
abundant.  The  chief  of  subsistence  ruled 
otherwise,  however,  thinking  it  better  to 
let  that  source  of  supply  lie  exposed  to  the 
first  advance  of  the  enemy,  while  he  drew 
upon  the  Richmond  depots  for  a  daily 
ration,  and  shipped  it  by  the  overtasked 


Red  Tape.  203 

line  of  railway  leading  from  the  capital  to 
Manassas.  It  was  nothing  to  him  that  he 
was  thus  exhausting  the  rear  and  crippling 
the  resources  of  the  country  for  the  future. 
It  was  nothing  to  him  that  in  the  midst  of 
plenty  the  army  was  upon  a  short  allow 
ance  of  food.  It  was  nothing  that  the  ship 
ments  of  provisions  from  Richmond  by  this 
railroad  seriously  interfered  with  other  im 
portant  interests.  System  was  everything, 
and  this  was  a  part  of  his  system.  The 
worst  of  it  was,  that  in  this  all-important 
branch  of  the  service  experience  and  or 
ganization  wrought  little  if  any  improve 
ment  as  the  war  went  on,  so  that  as  the 
supplies  and  the  means  of  transportation 
grew  smaller,  the  undiminished  inefficiency 
of  the  department  produced  disastrous  re 
sults.  The  army,  suffering  for  food,  was 
disheartened  by  the  thought  that  the  scar 
city  was  due  to  the  exhaustion  of  the  coun 
try's  resources.  Red  tape  was  supreme, 
and  no  sword  was  permitted  to  cut  it.  I 


204       A  Rebel  s  Recollections. 

remember  one  little  circumstance,  which 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  absoluteness 
with  which  system  was  suffered  to  override 
sense  in  the  administration  of  the  affairs 
of  the  subsistence  department.  I  served 
for  a  time  on  the  coast  of  South  Carolina, 
a  country  which  produces  rice  in  great 
abundance,  and  in  which  fresh  pork  and 
mutton  might  then  be  had  almost  for  the 
asking,  while  the  climate  is  wholly  unsuited 
to  the  making  of  flour  or  bacon.  Just  at 
that  time,  however,  the  officials  of  the  com 
missary  department  saw  fit  to  feed  the 
whole  army  on  bacon  and  flour,  articles 
which,  if  given  to  troops  in  that  quarter  of 
the  country  at  all,  must  be  brought  several 
hundred  miles  by  rail.  The  local  commis 
sary  officers  made  various  suggestions  look 
ing  to  the  use  of  the  provisions  of  which  the 
country  round  about  was  full,  but,  so  far  as 
I  could  learn,  no  attention  whatever  was 
paid  to  them.  At  the  request  of  one  of 
these  post  commissaries,  I  wrote  an  elabo- 


Red  Tape.  205 

rate  and  respectful  letter  on  the  subject; 
setting  forth  the  fact  that  rice,  sweet  po 
tatoes,  corn  meal,  hominy,  grits,  mutton, 
and  pork  existed  in  great  abundance  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  the  troops,  and 
could  be  bought  for  less  than  one  third  the 
cost  of  the  flour  and  bacon  we  were  eating. 
The  letter  was  signed  by  the  post  com 
missary,  and  forwarded  through  the  regular 
channels,  with  the  most  favorable  indorse 
ments  possible,  but  it  resulted  in  nothing. 
The  department  presently  found  it  impossi 
ble  to  give  us  full  rations  of  bacon  and 
flour,  but  it  still  refused  to  think  of  the 
remedy  suggested.  It  cut  down  the  ration 
instead,  thus  reducing  the  men  to  a  state 
of  semi-starvation  in  a  country  full  of  food. 
Relief  came  at  last  in  the  shape  of  a  tech 
nicality,  else  it  would  not  have  been  allowed 
to  come  at  all.  A  vigilant  captain  dis 
covered  that  the  men  were  entitled  by  law 
to  commutation  in  money  for  their  rations, 
tt  fixed  rates,  and  acting  upon  this  the  men 


2o6       A  Rebel  s  Recollections. 

were  able  to  buy,  with  the  money  paid  them 
in  lieu  of  rations,  an  abundance  of  fresh 
meats  and  vegetables  ;  and  most  of  the 
companies  managed  at  the  same  time  to 
save  a  considerable  fund  for  future  use  out 
of  the  surplus,  so  great  was  the  disparity 
between  the  cost  of  the  food  they  bought 
and  that  which  the  government  wished  to 
furnish  them. 

The  indirect  effect  of  all  this  stupidity  — 
for  it  can  be  called  by  no  softer  name  — 
was  almost  as  bad  as  its  direct  results.  The 
people  at  home,  finding  that  the  men  in  the 
field  were  suffering  for  food,  undertook  to 
assist  in  supplying  them.  With  character 
istic  profusion  they  packed  boxes  and  sent 
them  to  their  soldier  friends  and  acquaint 
ances,  particularly  during  the  first  year  of 
the  war.  Sometimes  these  supplies  were 
permitted  to  reach  their  destination,  and 
sometimes  they  were  allowed  to  decay  in  a 
depot  because  of  some  failure  on  the  part 
of  the  sender  to  comply  with  the  mysteri- 


Red  Tape.  207 

ous  canons  of  official  etiquette.  In  either 
case  they  were  wasted.  If  they  got  to  the 
army  they  were  used  wastefully  by  the 
men,  who  could  not  carry  them  and  had  no 
place  of  storage  for  them.  If  they  were 
detained  anywhere,  they  remained  there 
until  some  change  of  front  made  it  neces 
sary  to  destroy  them.  There  seemed  to  be 
nobody  invested  with  sufficient  authority 
to  turn  them  to  practical  account.  I  re 
member  a  box  of  my  own,  packed  with 
cooked  meats,  vegetables,  fruits,  —  all  per 
ishable,  —  which  got  within  three  miles  of 
my  tent,  but  could  get  no  farther,  although 
I  hired  a  farmer's  wagon  with  which  to 
bring  it  to  camp,  where  my  company  was 
at  that  moment  in  sore  need  of  its  contents. 
There  was  some  informality,  —  the  officer 
having  it  in  charge  could  not  tell  me  what, 
—  about  the  box  itself,  or  its  transmission, 
or  its  arrival,  or  something  else,  and  so  it 
£ould  not  be  delivered  to  me,  though  I  had 
the  wa  'rant  of  my  colonel  in  writing,  for 


208       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

receiving  it.  Dismissing  my  wagoner,  I 
told  the  officer  in  charge  that  the  contents 
of  the  box  were  of  a  perishable  character, 
and  that  rather  than  have  them  wasted,  I 
should  be  glad  to  have  him  accept  the 
whole  as  a  present  to  his  mess  ;  but  he 
declined,  on  the  ground  that  to  accept  the 
present  would  be  a  gross  irregularity  so 
long  as  there  was  an  embargo  upon  the 
package.  I  received  the  box  three  months 
later,  after  its  contents  had  become  entirely 
worthless.  Now  this  is  but  one  of  a  hun 
dred  cases  within  my  own  knowledge,  and 
it  will  serve  to  show  the  reader  how  the 
inefficiency  of  the  subsistence  department 
led  to  a  wasteful  expenditure  of  those  pri 
vate  stores  of  food  which  constituted  our 
only  reserve  for  the  future. 

And  there  was  never  any  improvement. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  war 
the  commissariat  was  just  sufficiently  well 
managed  to  keep  the  troops  in  a  state  of 
semi-starvation.  On  one  occasion  the  com- 


Red  Tape.  209 

pany  of  artillery  to  which  I  was  attached 
lived  for  thirteen  days,  in  winter  quarters, 
on  a  daily  dole  of  half  a  pound  of  corn  meal 
per  man,  while  food  in  abundance  was 
stored  within  five  miles  of  its  camp — a 
railroad  connecting  the  two  points,  and  the 
wagons  of  the  battery  lying  idle  all  the 
while.  This  happened  because  the  subsist 
ence  department  had  not  been  officially  in 
formed  of  our  transfer  from  one  battalion 
to  another,  though  the  fact  of  the  transfer 
was  under  their  eyes,  and  the  order  of  the 
chief  of  artillery  making  it  was  offered  them 
in  evidence.  These  officers  were  not  to 
blame.  They  knew  the  temper  of  their 
chief,  and  had  been  taught  the  omnipotence 
of  routine. 

But  it  was  in  Richmond  that  routine 
was  carried  to  its  absurdest  extremities. 
There,  everything  was  done  by  rule  except 
those  things  to  which  system  of  some  sort 
would  have  been  of  advantage,  and  they 
were  left  at  loose  ends.  Among  :>ther 
«4 


2io       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

things  a  provost  system  was  devised  and 
brought  to  perfection  during  the  time  of 
martial  law.  Having  once  tasted  the 
sweets  of  despotic  rule,  its  chief  refused 
to  resign  any  part  of  his  absolute  sov 
ereignty  over  the  city,  even  when  the  reign 
of  martial  law  ceased  by  limitation  of  time. 
His  system  of  guards  and  passports  was  a 
very  marvel  of  annoying  inefficiency.  It 
effectually  blocked  the  way  of  every  man 
who  was  intent  upon  doing  his  duty,  while 
it  gave  unconscious  but  sure  protection  to 
spies,  blockade-runners,  deserters,  and  ab 
sentees  without  leave  from  the  armies.  It 
was  omnipotent  for  the  annoyance  of  sol 
dier  and  citizen,  but  utterly  worthless  for 
any  good  purpose.  If  a  soldier  on  furlough 
or  even  on  detached  duty  arrived  in  Rich 
mond,  he  was  taken  in  charge  by  the  pro 
vost  guards  at  the  railway  station,  marched 
to  the  soldiers'  home  or  some  other  vile 
prison  house,  and  kept  there  in  durance 
during  the  whole  time  of  his  stay.  It  mat- 


Red  Tape.  211 

tered  not  how  legitimate  his  papers  were, 
or  how  evident  his  correctness  of  purpose. 
The  system  required  that  he  should  be 
locked  up,  and  locked  up  he  was,  in  every 
case,  until  one  plucky  fellow  made  fight  by 
appeal  to  the  courts,  and  so  compelled  the 
abandonment  of  a  practice  for  which  there 
was  never  any  warrant  in  law  or  necessity 
in  fact. 

Richmond  being  the  railroad  centre  from 
which  the  various  lines  radiated,  nearly 
every  furloughed  soldier  and  officer  on 
leave  was  obliged  to  pass  through  the  city, 
going  home  and  returning.  Now  to  any 
ordinary  intelligence  it  would  seem  that  a 
man  bearing  a  full  description  of  himself, 
and  a  furlough  signed  by  his  captain, 
colonel,  brigadier,  division-commander,  lieu 
tenant-general,  and  finally  by  Robert  E. 
Lee  as  general-in-chief,  might  have  been 
allowed  to  go  peaceably  to  his  home  by  the 
nearest  route.  But  that  was  no  ordinary 
Intelligence  which  ruled  Richmond.  Its 


212       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

ability  to  find  places  in  which  to  interfere 
was  unlimited,  and  it  decreed  that  no  sol 
dier  should  leave  Richmond,  either  to  gc 
home  or  to  return  direct  to  the  army,  with 
out  a  brown  paper  passport,  signed  by  an 
officer  appointed  for  that  purpose,  and 
countersigned  by  certain  other  persons 
whose  authority  to  sign  or  countersign 
anything  nobody  was  ever  able  to  trace  to 
its  source.  If  any  such  precaution  had 
been  necessary,  it  would  not  have  been  so 
bad,  or  even  being  unnecessary,  if  there 
had  been  the  slightest  disposition  on  the 
part  of  these  passport  people  to  facilitate 
obedience  to  their  own  requirements,  the 
long-suffering  officers  and  men  of  the  army 
would  have  uttered  no  word  of  complaint. 
But  the  facts  were  exactly  the  reverse. 
The  passport  officials  rigidly  maintained 
the  integrity  of  their  office  hours,  and  nei 
ther  entreaty  nor  persuasion  would  induce 
them  in  any  case  to  anticipate  by  a  single 
minute  the  hour  for  beginning,  or  to  post- 


Red  Tape.  213 

pone  the  lime  of  ending  their  daily  duties. 
I  stood  one  day  in  their  office  in  a  crowd 
of  fellow  soldiers  and  officers,  some  on  fur 
lough  going  home,  some  returning  after  a 
brief  visit,  and  still  others,  like  myself,  go 
ing  from  one  place  to  another  under  orders 
and  on  duty.  The  two  trains  by  which 
most  of  us  had  to  go  were  both  to  leave 
within  an  hour,  and  if  we  should  lose  them 
we  must  remain  twenty-four  hours  longer 
in  Richmond,  where  the  hotel  rate  was 
then  sixty  dollars  a  day.  In  full  view  ot 
these  facts,  the  passport  men,  daintily 
dressed,  sat  there  behind  their  railing, 
chatting  and  laughing  for  a  full  hour,  suf 
fering  both  trains  to  depart  and  all  these 
men  to  be  left  over  rather  than  do  thirty 
minutes'  work  in  advance  of  the  improp 
erly  fixed  office  hour.  It  resulted  from  this 
system  that  many  men  on  three  or  five 
days'  leave  lost  nearly  the  whole  of  it  in 
delays,  going  and  returning.  Many  others 
were  kept  in  Richmond  for  want  of  a  pass- 


214       A    Rebel's  Recollections. 

port  until  their  furloughs  expired,  when 
they  were  arrested  for  absence  without 
leave,  kept  three  or  four  days  in  the  guard 
house,  and  then  taken  as  prisoners  to  their 
commands,  to  which  they  had  tried  hard  to 
go  of  their  own  motion  at  the  proper  time. 
Finally  the  abuse  became  so  outrageous 
that  General  Lee,  in  his  capacity  of  gen- 
eral-in- chief,  issued  a  peremptory  order  for 
bidding  anybody  to  interfere  in  any  way 
with  officers  or  soldiers  traveling  under  his 
written  authority. 

But  the  complications  of  the  passport 
system,  before  the  issuing  of  that  order, 
were  endless.  I  went  once  with  a  friend 
in  search  of  passports.  As  I  had  passed 
through  Richmond  a  few  weeks  before,  I 
fancied  I  knew  all  about  the  business  of 
getting  the  necessary  papers.  Armed  with 
our  furloughs  we  went  straight  from  the 
irain  to  the  passport  office,  and  presenting 
our  papers  to  the  young  man  in  charge,  we 
asked  for  the  brown  paper  permits  which 


Red  Tape.  215 

we  must  show  upon  leaving  town.  The 
young  man  prepared  them  and  gave  them 
to  us,  but  this  was  no  longer  the  end  of  the 
matter.  These  passports  must  be  counter 
signed,  and,  strangely  enough,  my  friend's 
required  the  sign-manual  of  Lieutenant  X., 
whose  office  was  in  the  lower  part  of  the 
city,  while  mine  must  be  signed  by  Lieu 
tenant  Y.,  who  made  his  head-quarters 
some  distance  farther  up  town.  As  my 
friend  and  I  were  of  precisely  the  same 
rank,  came  from  the  same  command,  were 
going  to  the  same  place,  and  held  furloughs 
in  exactly  the  same  words,  I  shall  not  be 
deemed  unreasonable  when  I  declare  my 
conviction  that  no  imbecility,  less  fully  de 
veloped  than  that  which  then  governed 
Richmond,  could  possibly  have  discovered 
any  reason  for  requiring  that  our  passports 
should  be  countersigned  by  different  peo- 
pie. 

But  with  all  the  trouble  it  gave  to  men 
intent  upon  doing  their  duty,  this  cumbrous 


2i6       A  Rebel's  Recollection*. 

passport  system  was  well-nigh  worthless 
for  any  of  the  purposes  whose  accomplish 
ment  might  have  excused  its  existence. 
Indeed,  in  some  cases  it  served  to  assist 
the  very  people  it  was  intended  to  arrest. 
In  one  instance  within  my  own  knowledge, 
a  soldier  who  wished  to  visit  his  home, 
some  hundreds  of  miles  away,  failing  to 
get  a  furlough,  shouldered  his  musket  and 
set  out  with  no  scrip  for  his  journey,  de 
pending  upon  his  familiarity  with  the  pass 
port  system  for  the  accomplishment  of  his 
purpose.  Going  to  a  railroad  station,  he 
planted  himself  at  one  of  the  entrances  as 
a  sentinel,  and  proceeded  to  demand  pass 
ports  of  every  comer.  Then  he  got  upon 
the  train,  and  between  stations  he  passed 
through  the  cars,  again  inspecting  people's 
traveling  papers.  Nobody  was  surprised 
at  the  performance.  It  was  not  at  all  an 
unusual  thing  for  a  sentinel  to  go  out  with 
a  train  in  this  way;,  and  nobody  doubted 
that  the  man  had  been  sent  upon  this 
errand. 


Red  Tape.  217 

On  another  occasion  two  officers  of  my 
acquaintance  were  going  from  a  southern 
post  to  Virginia  on  some  temporary  duty, 
and  in  their  orders  there  was  a  clause 
directing  them  to  "  arrest  and  lodge  in  the 
nearest  guard-house  or  jail "  all  soldiers 
they  might  encounter  who  were  absent 
without  leave  from  their  commands.  As 
the  train  upon  which  they  traveled  ap 
proached  Weldon,  N.  C.,  a  trio  of  guards 
passed  through  the  cars,  inspecting  pass 
ports.  This  was  the  third  inspection  in 
flicted  upon  the  passengers  within  a  few 
hours,  and,  weary  of  it,  one  of  the  two 
officers  met  the  demand  for  his  passport 
with  a  counter  demand  for  the  guards' 
authority  to  examine  it.  The  poor  fellows 
were  there  honestly  enough,  doubtless,  do 
ing  a  duty  which  was  certainly  not  alto 
gether  pleasant,  but  they  had  been  sent  out 
on  their  mission  with  no  attendant  officer, 
and  no  scrap  of  paper  to  attest  their  au 
thority,  or  even  to  avouch  their  right  to  be 


218       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

on  the  train  at  all ;  wherefore  the  journey 
ing  officer,  exhibiting  his  own  orders,  pro 
ceeded  to  arrest;  them.  Upon  their  arrival 
at  Weldon,  where  their  quarters  were,  he 
released  them,  but  not  without  a  lesson 
which  provost  guards  in  that  vicinity  re 
membered.  I  tell  the  story  for  the  sake 
of  showing  how  great  a  degree  of  laxity 
and  carelessness  prevailed  in  the  depart 
ment  which  was  organized  especially  to 
enforce  discipline  by  putting  everybody  un 
der  surveillance. 

But  this  was  not  all.  In  Richmond, 
where  the  passport  system  had  its  birth, 
and  where  its  annoying  requirements  were 
most  sternly  enforced  against  people  having 
a  manifest  right  to  travel,  there  were  still 
greater  abuses.  Will  the  reader  believe 
that  while  soldiers,  provided  with  the  very 
best  possible  evidence  of  their  right  to 
enter  and  leave  Richmond,  were  badgered 
and  delayed  as  I  have  explained,  in  the 
passport  office,  the  bits  of  brown  paper 


Red  Tape.  219 

over  which  so  great  an  ado  was  made  might 
be,  and  were,  bought  and  sold  by  dealers  ? 
That  such  was  the  case  I  have  the  very 
best  evidence,  namely,  that  of  my  own 
senses.  If  the  system  was  worth  anything 
at  all,  if  it  was  designed  to  accomplish  any 
worthy  end,  its  function  was  to  prevent  the 
escape  of  spies,  blockade-runners,  and  de 
serters  ;  and  yet  these  were  precisely  the 
people  who  were  least  annoyed  by  it.  By 
a  system  of  logic  peculiar  to  themselves, 
the  provost  marshal's  people  seem  to  have 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  men  desert 
ing  the  army,  acting  as  spies,  or  "  running 
the  blockade"  to  the  North,  were  to  be 
found  only  in  Confederate  uniforms,  and 
against  men  wearing  these  the  efforts  of 
the  department  were  especially  directed. 
Non-military  men  had  little  difficulty  in 
getting  passports  at  will,  and  failing  this 
there  were  brokers'  shops  in  which  they 
could  buy  them  at  a  comparatively  small 
cost.  I  knew  one  case  in  which  an  army 


22O       A   Rebel's  Recollections. 

officer  in  full  uniform,  hurrying  through 
Richmond  before  the  expiration  of  his 
leave,  in  order  that  he  might  be  with  his 
command  in  a  battle  then  impending,  was 
ordered  about  from  one  official  to  another 
in  a  vain  search  for  the  necessary  passport, 
until  he  became  discouraged  and  impatient. 
He  finally  went  in  despair  to  a  Jew,  and 
bought  an  illicit  permit  to  go  to  his  post 
of  duty. 

But  even  as  against  soldiers,  except  those 
who  were  manifestly  entitled  to  visit  Rich 
mond,  the  system  was  by  no  means  effect 
ive.  More  than  one  deserter,  to  my  own 
knowledge,  passed  through  Richmond  in 
full  uniform,  though  by  what  means  they 
avoided  arrest,  when  there  were  guards  and 
passport  inspectors  at  nearly  every  corner, 
I  cannot  guess. 

At  one  time,  when  General  Stuart,  with 
his  cavalry,  was  encamped  within  a  few 
miles  of  the  city,  he  discovered  that  his 
men  were  visiting  Richmond  by  dozens, 


Red  Tape.  221 

without  leave,  which,  for  some  reason  of 
other  known  only  to  the  provost  marshal's 
office,  they  were  able  to  do  without  moles 
tation.  General  Stuart,  rinding  that  this 
was  the  case,  resolved  to  take  the  matter 
into  his  own  hands,  and  accordingly  with 
a  troop  of  cavalry  he  made  a  descent  upon 
the  theatre  one  night,  and  arrested  those 
of  his  men  whom  he  found  there.  The 
provost  marshal,  who  it  would  seem  was 
more  deeply  concerned  for  the  preservation 
of  his  own  dignity  than  for  the  maintenance 
of  discipline,  sent  a  message  to  the  great 
cavalier,  threatening  him  with  arrest  if  he 
should  again  presume  to  enter  Richmond 
for  the  purpose  of  making  arrests.  Noth 
ing  could  have  pleased  Stuart  better.  He 
replied  that  he  should  visit  Richmond  again 
the  next  night,  with  thirty  horsemen  ;  that 
ha  should  patrol  the  streets  in  search  of 
absentees  from  his  command ;  and  that 
General  Winder  might  arrest  him  if  he 
could.  The  jingling  of  spurs  was  loud  in 


222       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

the  streets  that  night,  but  the  provost  mar 
shal  made  no  attempt  to  arrest  the  defiant 
horseman. 

Throughout  the  management  of  affairs 
in  Richmond  a  cumbrous  inefficiency  was 
everywhere  manifest.  From  the  president, 
who  insulted  his  premier  for  presuming  to 
offer  some  advice  about  the  conduct  of  the 
war,  and  quarreled  with  his  generals  be 
cause  they  failed  to  see  the  wisdom  of  a 
military  movement  suggested  by  himself, 
down  to  the  pettiest  clerk  in  a  bureau, 
there  was  everywhere  a  morbid  sensitive 
ness  on  the  subject  of  personal  dignity, 
and  an  exaggerated  regard  for  routine, 
which  seriously  impaired  the  efficiency  of 
the  government  and  greatly  annoyed  the 
army.  Under  all  the  circumstances  the 
reader  will  not  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
the  government  at  Richmond  was  by  no 
means  idolized  by  the  men  in  the  field. 

The  wretchedness  of  its  management 
began  to  bear  fruit  early  in  the  war,  and 


Red  Tape.  223 

the  fruit  was  bitter  in  the  mouths  of  the 
soldiers.  Mr.  Davis's  evident  hostility  to 
Generals  Beauregard  and  Johnston,  which 
showed  itself  in  his  persistent  refusal  to  let 
them  concentrate  their  men,  in  his  obsti 
nate  thwarting  of  all  their  plans,  and  in  his 
interference  with  the  details  of  army  organ 
ization  on  which  they  were  agreed,  —  a 
hostility  born,  as  General  Thomas  Jordan 
gives  us  to  understand,  of  their  failure  to 
see  the  wisdom  of  his  plan  of  campaign 
after  Bull  Run,  which  was  to  take  the  army 
across  the  lower  Potomac  at  a  point  where 
it  could  never  hope  to  recross,  for  the  pur 
pose  of  capturing  a  small  force  lying  there 
under  General  Sickles,  —  was  not  easily 
concealed  ;  and  the  army  was  too  intelli 
gent  not  to  know  that  a  meddlesome  and 
dictatorial  president,  on  bad  terms  with  his 
generals  in  the  field,  and  bent  upon  thwart 
ing  their  plans,  was  a  very  heavy  load  to 
carry.  The  generals  held  their  peace,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  but  the  principal  facts1 


224       ^  Rebel's  Recollections. 

were  well  known  to  officers  and  men,  and 
when  the  time  came,  in  the  fall  of  1861,  for 
the  election  of  a  president  under  the  per 
manent  constitution  (Mr.  Davis  having  held 
office  provisionally  only,  up  to  that  time), 
there  was  a  very  decided  disposition  on  the 
part  of  the  troops  to  vote  against  him. 
They  were  told,  however,  that  as  there  was 
no  candidate  opposed  to  him,  he  must  be 
elected  at  any  rate,  and  that  the  moral  ef 
fect  of  showing  a  divided  front  to  the  en 
emy  would  be  very  bad  indeed  ;  and  in  this 
way  only  was  the  undivided  vote  of  the 
army  secured  for  him.  The  troops  voted 
for  Mr.  Davis  thus  under  stress  of  circum 
stances,  in  the  hope  that  all  would  yet  be 
well  ;  but  his  subsequent  course  was  not 
calculated  to  reinstate  him  in  their  confi 
dence,  and  the  wish  that  General  Lee 
might  see  fit  to  usurp  all  the  powers'  of 
government  was  a  commonly  expressed 
one,  both  in  the  army  and  in  private  life 
during  the  last  two  years  of  the  war. 


Red  Tape.  225 

The  favoritism  which  governed  nearly 
every  one  of  the  president's  appointments 
was  the  leading,  though  not  the  only, 
ground  of  complaint.  And  truly  the  army 
had  reason  to  murmur,  when  one  of  the 
president's  pets  was  promoted  all  the  way 
from  lieutenant-colonel  to  lieutenant-gen 
eral,  having  been  but  once  in  battle,  —  and 
then  only  constructively  so,  —  on  his  way 
up,  while  colonels  by  the  hundred,  and 
brigadier  and  major  generals  by  the  score, 
who  had  been  fighting  hard  and  success 
fully  all  the  time,  were  left  as  they  were. 
And  when  this  suddenly  created  general, 
almost  without  a  show  of  resistance,  sur 
rendered  one  of  the  most  important  strong 
holds  in  the  country,  together  with  a  vet 
eran  army  of  considerable  size,  is  it  any 
wonder  that  we  questioned  the  wisdom  of 
the  president  whose  blind  favoritism  had 
dealt  the  cause  so  severe  a  blow  ?  But  not 
content  with  this,  as  soon  as  the  surren 
dered  general  was  exchanged  the  president 
15 


226       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

tried  to  place  him  in  command  of  the  de 
fenses  of  Richmond,  then  hard  pressed  by 
General  Grant,  and  was  only  prevented 
from  doing  so  by  the  man's  own  discovery 
that  the  troops  would  not  willingly  serve 
under  him. 

The  extent  to  which  presidential  par 
tiality  and  presidential  intermeddling  with 
affairs  in  the  field  were  carried  may  be 
guessed,  perhaps,  from  the  fact  that  the 
Richmond  Examiner,  the  newspaper  which 
most  truly  reflected  the  sentiment  of  the 
people,  found  consolation  for  the  loss 
of  Vicksburg  and  New  Orleans  in  the 
thought  that  the  consequent  cutting  of  the 
Confederacy  in  two  freed  the  trans-Missis 
sippi  armies  from  paralyzing  dictation.  In 
its  leading  article  for  October  5,  1864,  the 
Examiner  said  :  — 

"  The  fall  of  New  Orleans  and  the  sur 
render  of  Vicksburg  proved  blessings  to 
the  cause  beyond  the  Mississippi.  It  ter 
minated  the  regime  of  pet  generals.  It  put 


Red  Tape.  227 

a  stop  to  official  piddling  in  the  conduct  of 
the  armies  and  the  plan  of  campaigns. 
The  moment  when  it  became  impossible  to 
send  orders  by  telegraph  to  court  officers, 
at  the  head  of  troops  who  despised  them, 
was  the  moment  of  the  turning  tide." 

So  marked  was  the  popular  discontent, 
not  with  Mr.  Davis  only,  but  with  the  en 
tire  government  and  Congress  as  well,  that 
a  Richmond  newspaper  at  one  time  dared 
to  suggest  a  counter  revolution  as  the  only 
means  left  of  saving  the  cause  from  the 
strangling  it  was  receiving  at  the  hands  of 
its  guardians  in  Richmond.  And  the  sug 
gestion  seemed  so  very  reasonable  and 
timely  that  it  startled  nobody,  except  per 
haps  a  congressman  or  two  who  had  no 
stomach  for  field  service. 

The  approach  of  the  end  wrought  no 
change  in  the  temper  of  the  government, 
and  one  of  its  last  acts  puts  in  the  strong 
est  light  its  disposition  to  sacrifice  the  in 
terests  of  the  army  to  the  convenience  of 


228       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

the  court.  When  the  evacuation  of  Rich 
mond  was  begun,  a  train  load  of  provisions 
was  sent  by  General  Lee's  order  from  one 
of  the  interior  depots  to  Amelia  Court 
House,  for  the  use  of  the  retreating  army, 
which  was  without  food  and  must  march  to 
that  point  before  it  could  receive  a  supply. 
But  the  president  and  his  followers  were  in 
haste  to  leave  the  capital,  and  needed  the 
train,  wherefore  it  was  not  allowed  to  re 
main  at  Amelia  Court  House  long  enough 
to  be  unloaded,  but  was  hurried  on  to  Rich 
mond,  where  its  cargo  was  thrown  out  to 
facilitate  the  flight  of  the  president  and  his 
personal  followers,  while  the  starving  army 
was  left  to  suffer  in  an  utterly  exhausted 
country,  with  no  source  of  supply  anywhere 
within  its  reach.  The  surrender  of  the 
army  was  already  inevitable,  it  is  true,  but 
that  fact  in  no  way  justified  this  last,  crown- 
ing  act  of  selfishness  and  cruelty. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE   END,   AND   AFTER. 

IT  is  impossible  to  say  precisely  when 
the  conviction  became  general  in  the  South 
that  we  were  to  be  beaten.  I  cannot  even 
decide  at  what  time  I  myself  began  to 
think  the  cause  a  hopeless  one,  and  I  have 
never  yet  found  one  of  my  fellow-Confed 
erates,  though  I  have  questioned  many  of 
them,  who  could  tell  me  with  any  degree  of 
certainty  the  history  of  his  change  from 
confidence  to  despondency.  We  schooled 
ourselves  from  the  first  to  think  that  we 
should  ultimately  win,  and  the  habit  of 
thinking  so  was  too  strong  to  be  easily 
broken  by  adverse  happenings.  Having 
undertaken  to  make  good  our  declaration 
of  independence,  we  refused  to  admit,  even 
to  ourselves,  the  possibility  of  failure.  It 


230       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

was  a  part  of  our  soldierly  and  patriotic 
duty  to  believe  that  ultimate  success  was 
to  be  ours,  and  Stuart  only  uttered  the 
common  thought  of  army  and  people,  when 
he  said,  "We  are  bound  to  believe  that, 
anyhow."  We  were  convinced,  beyond  the 
possibility  of  a  doubt,  of  the  absolute  right 
eousness  of  our  cause,  and  in  spite  of  his 
tory  we  persuaded  ourselves  that  a  people 
battling  for  the  right  could  not  fail  in  the 
end.  And  so  our  hearts  went  on  hoping 
for  success  long  after  our  heads  had  learned 
to  expect  failure.  Besides  all  this,  we 
never  gave  verbal  expression  to  the  doubts 
we  felt,  or  even  to  the  longing,  which  must 
have  been  universal,  for  the  end.  It  was 
our  religion  to  believe  in  the  triumph  of 
our  cause,  and  it  was  heresy  of  the  rankest 
sort  to  doubt  it  or  even  to  admit  the  possi 
bility  of  failure.  It  was  ours  to  fight  on 
indefinitely,  and  to  the  future  belonged  the 
award  of  victory  to  our  arms.  We  did  not 
allow  ourselves  even  the  poor  privilege  oi 


The  End,  and  After.        231 

wishing  that  the  struggle  might  end,  ex* 
cept  as  we  coupled  the  wish  with  a  pro 
nounced  confidence  in  our  ability  to  make 
the  end  what  we  desired  it  to  be.  I  re 
member  very  well  the  stern  rebuke  admin 
istered  by  an  officer  to  as  gallant  a  fellow 
as  any  in  the  army,  who,  in  utter  weariness 
and  wretchedness,  in  the  trenches  at  Spott- 
sylvania  Court  House,  after  a  night  of 
watching  in  a  drenching  rain,  said  that  he 
hoped  the  campaign  then  opening  might  be 
the  last  one  of  the  war.  His  plea  that  he 
also  hoped  the  war  would  end  as  we  de 
sired  availed  him  nothing.  To  be  weary 
in  the  cause  was  offense  enough,  and  the 
officer  gave  warning  that  another  such  ex 
pression  would  subject  the  culprit  to  trial 
by  court-martial.  In  this  he  only  spoke 
the  common  mind.  We  had  enlisted  for 
the  war,  and  a  thought  of  weariness  was 
nardly  better  than  a  wish  for  surrender. 
This  was  the  temper  in  which  we  began 
the  campaign  of  1864,  and  so  far  as  I  have 


232       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

been  able  to  discover,  it  underwent  little 
change  afterwards.  Even  during  the  final 
retreat,  though  there  were  many  desertions 
soon  after  Richmond  was  left  behind,  not 
one  of  us  who  remained  despaired  of  the 
end  we  sought.  We  discussed  the  compar 
ative  strategic  merits  of  the  line  we  had 
left  and  the  new  one  we  hoped  to  make 
on  the  Roanoke  River,  and  we  wondered 
where  the  seat  of  government  would  be, 
but  not  one  word  was  said  about  a  proba 
ble  or  possible  surrender.  Nor  was  the 
army  alone  in  this.  The  people  who  were 
being  left  behind  were  confident  that  they 
should  see  us  again  shortly,  on  our  way  to 
Richmond's  recapture. 

Up  to  the  hour  of  the  evacuation  of 
Richmond,  the  newspapers  were  as  con 
fident  as  ever  of  victory.  During  the  fall 
of  1864  they  even  believed,  or  professed  to 
believe,  that  our  triumph  was  already  at 
hand.  The  Richmond  Whig  of  October  5, 
1864,  said:  "That  the  present  condition 


The  End,  and  After.        233 

of  affairs,  compared  with  that  of  any  pre 
vious  year  at  the  same  season,  at  least 
since  1861,  is  greatly  in  our  favor,  we  think 
can  hardly  be  denied."  In  the  same  arti 
cle  it  said  :  "  That  General  Lee  can  keep 
Grant  out  of  Richmond  from  this  time 
until  doomsday,  if  he  should  be  tempted  to 
keep  up  the  trial  so  long,  we  are  as  con 
fident  as  we  can  be  of  anything  whatever." 
The  Examiner  of  September  24,  1864,  said 
in  its  leading  editorial  :  "  The  final  strug 
gle  for  the  possession  of  Richmond  and  of 
Virginia  is  now  near.  This  war  draws  to  a 
close.  If  Richmond  is  held  by  the  South 
till  the  first  of  November  it  will  be  ours 
forever  more ;  for  the  North  will  never 
throw  another  huge  army  into  the  abyss 
where  so  many  lie  ;  and  the  war  will  con 
clude,  beyond  a  doubt,  with  the  independ 
ence  of  the  Southern  States."  In  its  issue 
for  October  7,  1864,  the  same  paper  began 
its  principal  editorial  article  with  this  para 
graph  :  "  One  month  of  spirit  and  energy 


234       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

now,  and  the  campaign  is  over,  and  the  wai 
is  over.  We  do  not  mean  that  if  the  year's 
campaign  end  favorably  for  us,  McClellan 
will  be  elected  as  Yankee  President.  That 
may  come,  or  may  not  come ;  but  no  part 
of  our  chance  for  an  honorable  peace  and 
independence  rests  upon  that.  Let  who 
will  be  Yankee  President,  with  the  failure 
of  Grant  and  Sherman  this  year,  the  war 
ends.  And  with  Sherman's  army  already 
isolated  and  cut  off  in  Georgia,  and  Grant 
unable  either  to  take  or  besiege  Richmond, 
we  have  only  to  make  one  month's  exertion 
in  improving  our  advantages,  and  then  it 
may  safely  be  said  that  the  fourth  year's 
campaign,  and  with  it  the  war  itself,  is  one 
gigantic  failure."  The  Richmond  Whig  of 
September  8,  1864,  with  great  gravity 
copied  from  the  Wytheville  Dispatch  an 
article  beginning  as  follows  :  "  Believing 
as  we  do  that  the  war  of  subjugation  is 
virtually  over,  we  deem  it  not  improper  to 
make  a  few  suggestions  relative  to  the 


The  End,  and  After.         235 

treatment  of  Yankees  after  the  war  is  over. 
Our  soldiers  know  how  to  treat  them  now, 
but  then  a  different  treatment  will  be  nec 
essary."  And  so  they  talked  all  the  time. 
Much  of  this  was  mere  whistling  to  keep 
our  courage  up,  of  course,  but  we  tried 
very  hard  to  believe  all  these  pleasant 
things,  and  in  a  measure  we  succeeded. 
And  yet  I  think  we  must  have  known  from 
the  beginning  of  the  campaign  of  1864  that 
the  end  was  approaching,  and  that  it  could 
not  be  other  than  a  disastrous  one.  We 
knew  very  well  that  General  Lee's  army 
was  smaller  than  it  ever  had  been  before. 
We  knew,  too,  that  there  were  no  reinforce 
ments  to  be  had  from  any  source.  The 
conscription  had  put  every  man  worth 
counting  into  the  field  already,  and  the  lit- 
vle  army  that  met  General  Grant  in  the 
Wilderness  represented  all  that  remained 
of  the  Confederate  strength  in  Virginia. 
In  the  South  matters  were  at  their  worst, 
and  we  knew  that  not  a  man  could  come 


236       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

thence  to  our  assistance.  Lee  mustered  a 
total  strength  of  about  sixty-six  thousand 
men,  when  we  marched  out  of  winter  quar 
ters  and  began  in  the  Wilderness  that  long 
struggle  which  ended  nearly  a  year  later  at 
Appomattox.  With  that  army  alone  the 
war  was  to  be  fought  out,  and  we  had  to 
shut  our  eyes  to  facts  very  resolutely,  that 
we  might  not  see  how  certainly  we  were  to 
be  crushed.  And  we  did  shut  our  eyes  so 
successfully  as  to  hope  in  a  vague,  irra 
tional  way,  for  the  impossible,  to  the  very 
end.  In  the  Wilderness  we  held  our  own 
against  every  assault,  and  the  visible  pun 
ishment  we  inflicted  upon  the  foe  was  so 
great  that  hardly  any  man  in  our  army  ex 
pected  to  see  a  Federal  force  on  our  side 
of  the  river  at  daybreak  next  morning. 
We  thought  that  General  Grant  was  as 
badly  hurt  as  Hooker  had  been  on  the 
same  field,  and  confidently  expected  him  to 
retreat  during  the  night.  When  he  moved 
by  his  left  flank  to  Spottsylvania  instead, 


The  End,  and  After.         237 

we  understood  what  manner  of  man  he 
was,  and  knew  that  the  persistent  pound 
ing,  which  of  all  things  we  were  least  able 
to  endure,  had  begun.  When  at  last  we 
settled  down  in  the  trenches  around  Peters 
burg,  we  ought  to  have  known  that  the 
end  was  rapidly  drawing  near.  We  con 
gratulated  ourselves  instead  upon  the  fact 
that  we  had  inflicted  a  heavier  loss  than 
we  had  suffered,  and  buckled  on  our  armor 
anew. 

If  General  Grant  had  failed  to  break  our 
power  of  resistance  by  his  sledge-hammer 
blows,  it  speedily  became  evident  that  he 
would  be  more  successful  in  wearing  it 
away  by  the  constant  friction  of  a  siege. 
Without  fighting  a  battle  he  was  literally 
destroying  our  army.  The  sharp-shooting 
was  incessant,  and  the  bombardment  hardly 
less  so,  and  under  it  all  our  numbers  visibly 
decreased  day  by  day.  During  the  first 
two  months  of  the  siege  my  own  company, 
which  numbered  about  a  hundred  and  fifty 


238       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

men,  lost  sixty,  in  killed  and  wounded,  an 
average  of  a  man  a  day,  and  while  our  list 
of  casualties  was  greater  than  that  of  many 
other  commands,  there  were  undoubtedly 
some  companies  and  regiments  which  suf 
fered  more  than  we.  The  reader  will  read 
ily  understand  that  an  army  already  weak 
ened  by  years  of  war,  with  no  source  from 
which  to  recruit  its  ranks,  could  not  stand 
this  daily  waste  for  any  great  length  of 
time.  We  were  in  a  state  of  atrophy  for 
which  there  was  no  remedy  except  that  of 
freeing  the  negroes  and  making  soldiers  of 
them,  which  Congress  was  altogether  too 
loftily  sentimental  to  think  of  for  a  mo 
ment. 

There  was  no  longer  any  room  for  hope 
except  in  a  superstitious  belief  that  Provi 
dence  would  in  some  way  interfere  in  our 
behalf,  and  to  that  very  many  betook  them 
selves  for  comfort.  This  shifting  upon  a 
supernatural  power  the  task  we  had  failed 
to  accomplish  by  human  means  rapidly 


The  End,  and  After.         239 

ored  many  less  worthy  superstitions  among 
the  troops.  The  general  despondency, 
which  amounted  almost  to  despair,  doubt 
less  helped  to  bring  about  this  result,  and 
the  great  religious  "  revival  "  contributed  to 
it  in  no  small  degree.  I  think  hardly  any 
man  in  that  army  entertained  a  thought  of 
coming  out  of  the  struggle  alive.  The  only 
question  with  each  was  when  his  time  was 
to  come,  and  a  sort  of  gloomy  fatalism  took 
possession  of  many  minds.  Believing  that 
they  must  be  killed  sooner  or  later,  and 
that  the  hour  and  the  manner  of  their 
deaths  were  unalterably  fixed,  many  became 
singularly  reckless,  and  exposed  themselves 
with  the  utmost  carelessness  to  all  sorts  of 
unnecessary  dangers. 

"  I  'm  going  to  be  killed  pretty  soon," 
saia  as  brave  a  man  as  I  ever  knew,  to  me 
one  evening.  "  I  never  flinched  from  a 
bullet  until  to-day,  and  now  I  dodge  every 
time  one  whistles  within  twenty  feet  of 
me." 


240       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

I  tried  to  persuade  him  out  of  the  belief, 
and  even  got  for  him  a  dose  of  valerian 
with  which  to  quiet  his  nerves.  He  took 
the  medicine,  but  assured  me  that  he  was 
not  nervous  in  the  least. 

"  My  time  is  coming,  that 's  all,"  he  said  ; 
"and  I  don't  care.  A  few  days  more  or 
less  don't  signify  much."  An  hour  later 
the  poor  fellow's  head  was  blown  from  his 
shoulders  as  he  stood  by  my  side. 

One  such  incident  —  and  there  were 
many  of  them  —  served  to  confirm  a  super 
stitious  belief  in  presentiments  which  a 
hundred  failures  of  fulfillment  were  unable 
to  shake.  Meantime  the  revival  went  on. 
Prayer-meetings  were  held  in  every  tent. 
Testaments  were  in  every  hand,  and  a  sort 
of  religious  ecstasy  took  possession  of  the 
army.  The  men  had  ceased  to  rely  upon 
the  skill  of  their  leaders  or  the  strength  of 
our  army  for  success,  and  not  a  few  of 
them  hoped  now  for  a  miraculous  interpo 
sition  of  supernatural  power  in  our  behalf. 


The  End,  and  After.          241 

Men  in  this  mood  make  the  best  of  sol 
diers,  and  at  no  time  were  the  righting 
qualities  of  the  Southern  army  better  than 
during  the  siege.  Under  such  circum 
stances  men  do  not  regard  death,  and  even 
the  failure  of  any  effort  they  were  called 
upon  to  make  wrought  no  demoralization 
among  troops  who  had  persuaded  them 
selves  that  the  Almighty  held  victory  in 
store  for  them,  and  would  give  it  them  in 
due  time.  What  cared  they  for  the  failure 
of  mere  human  efforts,  when  they  were 
persuaded  that  through  such  failures  God 
was  leading  us  to  ultimate  victory  ?  Dis 
aster  seemed  only  to  strengthen  the  faith 
of  many.  They  saw  in  it  a  needed  lesson 
in  humility,  and  an  additional  reason  for 
believing  that  God  meant  to  bring  about 
victory  by  his  own  and  not  by  human 
strength.  They  did  their  soldierly  duties 
perfectly.  They  held  danger  and  fatigue 
alike  in  contempt.  It  was  their  duty  as 
Christian  men  to  obey  orders  without  ques- 
16 


242       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

tion,  and  they  did  so  in  the  thought  that  to 
do  otherwise  was  to  sin. 

That  the  confidence  bred  of  these  things 
should  be  of  a  gloomy  kind  was  natural 
enough,  and  the  gloom  was  not  dispelled, 
certainly,  by  the  conviction  of  every  man 
that  he  was  assisting  at  his  own  funeral. 
Failure,  too,  which  was  worse  than  death, 
was  plainly  inevitable  in  spite  of  it  all. 
We  persisted,  as  I  have  said,  in  vaguely 
hoping  and  trying  to  believe  that  success 
was  still  to  be  ours,  and  to  that  end  we 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  plainest  facts,  refusing 
to  admit  the  truth  which  was  everywhere 
evident,  namely,  that  our  efforts  had  failed, 
and  that  our  cause  was  already  in  its  death 
struggles.  But  we  must  have  known  all 
this,  nevertheless,  and  our  diligent  cultiva 
tion  of  an  unreasonable  hopefulness  served 
in  no  sensible  degree  to  raise  our  spirits. 

Even  positive  knowledge  does  not  always 
bring  belief.  I  doubt  if  a  condemned  man, 
who  finds  himself  in  full  bodily  health,  ever 


The  End,  and  After.         243 

quite  believes  that  he  is  to  die  within  the 
hour,  however  certainly  he  may  know  the 
fact ;  and  our  condition  was  not  unlike  that 
of  condemned  men. 

When  at  last  the  beginning  of  the  end 
came,  in  the  evacuation  of  Richmond  and 
the  effort  to  retreat,  everything  seemed  to  go 
to  pieces  at  once.  The  best  disciplinarians 
in  the  army  relaxed  their  reins.  The  best 
troops  became  disorganized,  and  hardly  any 
command  marched  in  a  body.  Companies 
were  mixed  together,  parts  of  each  being 
separated  by  detachments  of  others.  Fly 
ing  citizens  in  vehicles  of  every  conceivable 
sort  accompanied  and  embarrassed  the  col 
umns.  Many  commands  marched  heed 
lessly  on  without  orders,  and  seemingly 
without  a  thought  of  whither  they  were  go 
ing.  Others  mistook  the  meaning  of  their 
orders,  and  still  others  had  instructions 
which  it  was  impossible  to  obey  in  any 
case.  At  Amelia  Court  House  we  should 
have  found  a  supply  of  provisions.  Gen- 


244       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

eral  Lee  had  ordered  a  train  load  to  meet 
him  there,  but,  as  I  have  stated  in  a  previ 
ous  chapter,  the  interests  of  the  starving 
army  had  been  sacrificed  to  the  convenience 
or  the  cowardice  of  the  president  and  his 
personal  following.  The  train  had  been  hur 
ried  on  to  Richmond  and  its  precious  cargo 
of  food  thrown  out  there,  in  order  that  Mr. 
Davis  and  his  people  might  retreat  rapidly 
and  comfortably  from  the  abandoned  capi 
tal.  Then  began  the  desertion  of  which  we 
have  heard  so  much.  Up  to  that  time,  as 
far  as  I  can  learn,  if  desertions  had  occurred 
at  all  they  had  not  become  general ;  but 
now  that  the  government,  in  flying  from 
the  foe,  had  cut  off  our  only  supply  of  pro 
visions,  what  were  the  men  to  do  ?  Many 
of  them  wandered  off  in  search  of  food, 
with  no  thought  of  deserting  at  all.  Many 
others  followed  the  example  of  the  govern 
ment,  and  fled  ;  but  a  singularly  large  pro 
portion  of  the  little  whole  stayed  and 
stai  ved  to  the  last.  And  it  was  no  tech- 


The  End,  and  After.         245 

nical  or  metaphorical  starvation  which  we 
had  to  endure,  either,  as  a  brief  statement 
of  my  own  experience  will  show.  The  bat 
tery  to  which  I  was  attached  was  captured 
near  Amelia  Court  House,  and  within  a 
mile  or  two  of  my  home.  Seven  men  only 
escaped,  and  as  I  knew  intimately  every 
body  in  the  neighborhood,  I  had  no  trouble 
in  getting  horses  for  these  to  ride.  Apply 
ing  to  General  Lee  in  person  for  instruc 
tions,  I  was  ordered  to  march  on,  using  my 
own  judgment,  and  rendering  what  service 
I  could  in  the  event  of  a  battle.  In  this  in 
dependent  fashion  I  marched  with  much 
better  chances  than  most  of  the  men  had, 
to  get  food,  and  yet  during  three  days  and 
nights  our  total  supply  consisted  of  one  ear 
of  corn  to  the  man,  and  we  divided  that 
with  our  horses. 

The  end  came,  technically,  at  Appomat- 
tox,  but  of  the  real  difficulties  of  the  war 
the  end  was  not  yet.  The  trials  and  the 
perils  of  utter  disorganization  were  still  to 


246       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

be  endured,  and  as  the  condition  in  which 
many  parts  of  the  South  were  left  by  the 
fall  of  the  Confederate  government  was  an 
anomalous  one,  some  account  of  it  seems 
necessary  to  the  completeness  of  this  nar 
rative. 

Our  principal  danger  was  from  the  law 
less  bands  of  marauders  who  infested  the 
country,  and  our  greatest  difficulty  in  deal 
ing  with  them  lay  in  the  utter  absence  of 
constituted  authority  of  any  sort.  Our 
country  was  full  of  highwaymen  —  not  the 
picturesque  highwaymen  of  whom  fiction 
and  questionable  history  tell  us,  those  gal 
lant,  generous  fellows  whose  purse-cutting 
proclivities  seem  mere  peccadilloes  in  the 
midst  of  so  many  virtues  ;  not  these,  by 
any  means,  but  plain  highwaymen  of  the 
most  brutal  description  possible,  and  desti 
tute  even  of  the  merit  of  presenting  a  re 
spectable  appearance.  They  were  simply 
the  offscourings  of  the  two  armies  and  of 
the  suddenly  freed  negro  population,  —  de- 


The  End,  and  After.         247 

serters  from  fighting  regiments  on  both 
sides,  and  negro  desperadoes,  who  found 
common  ground  upon  which  to  fraternize 
in  their  common  depravity.  They  moved 
about  in  bands,  from  two  to  ten  strong,  cut 
ting  horses  out  of  plows,  plundering  help 
less  people,  and  wantonly  destroying  valu 
ables  which  they  could  not  carry  away.  At 
the  house  of  one  of  my  friends  where  only 
ladies  lived,  a  body  of  these  men  demanded 
dinner,  which  was  given  them.  They  then 
required  the  mistress  of  the  mansion  to  fill 
their  canteens  with  sorghum  molasses, 
which  they  immediately  proceeded  to  pour 
over  the  carpets  and  furniture  of  the  parlor. 
Outrages  were  of  every-day  enactment,  and 
there  was  no  remedy.  There  was  no  State, 
county,  or  municipal  government  in  exist 
ence  among  us.  We  had  no  courts,  no 
^ustices  of  the  peace,  no  sheriffs,  no  officers 
of  any  kind  invested  with  a  shadow  of  au 
thority,  and  there  were  not  men  enough  in 
the  community,  at  first,  to  resist  the  ma- 


248       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

rauders,  comparatively  few  of  the  surren 
dered  soldiers  having  found  their  way  home 
as  y*et.  Those  districts  in  which  the  Fed 
eral  armies  were  stationed  were  peculiarly 
fortunate.  The  troops  gave  protection  to 
the  people,  and  the  commandants  of  posts 
constituted  a  government  able  to  enforce 
order,  to  which  outraged  or  threatened  peo 
ple  could  appeal.  But  these  favored  sec 
tions  were  only  a  small  part  of  the  whole. 
The  troops  were  not  distributed  in  de 
tached  bodies  over  the  country,  but  were 
kept  in  considerable  masses  at  strategic 
points,  lest  a  guerrilla  war  should  succeed 
regular  hostilities  ;  and  so  the  greater  part 
of  the  country  was  left  wholly  without  law, 
at  a  time  when  law  was  most  imperatively 
needed.  I  mention  this,  not  to  the  dis 
credit  of  the  victorious  army  or  of  its  offi 
cers.  They  could  not  wisely  have  done 
otherwise.  If  the  disbanded  Confederates 
had  seen  fit  to  inaugurate  a  partisan  war 
fare,  as  many  of  the  Federal  commanders 


The  End,  and  After.         249 

believed  they  would,  they  could  have  an 
noyed  the  army  of  occupation  no  little  ;  and 
so  long  as  the  temper  of  the  country  in  this 
matter  was  unknown,  it  would  have  been  in 
the  last  degree  improper  to  station  small 
bodies  of  troops  in  exposed  situations. 
Common  military  prudence  dictated  the 
massing  of  the  troops,  and  as  soon  as  it  be 
came  evident  that  we  had  no  disposition  to 
resist  further,  but  were  disposed  rather  to 
render  such  assistance  as  we  could  in  re 
storing  and  maintaining  order,  everything 
was  done  which  could  be  done  to  protect 
us.  It  is  with  a  good  deal  of  pleasure  that 
I  bear  witness  to  the  uniform  disposition 
shown  by  such  Federal  officers  as  I  came 
in  contact  with  at  this  time,  to  protect  all 
quiet  citizens,  to  restore  order,  and  to  for 
ward  the  interests  of  the  community  they 
were  called  upon  to  govern.  In  one  case  I 
went  with  a  fellow-Confederate  to  the  head 
quarters  nearest  me,  —  eighteen  miles  away, 
—  -  and  reported  the  doings  of  some  maraud- 


250       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

crs  in  my  neighborhood,  which  had  been 
especially  outrageous.  The  general  in 
command  at  once  made  a  detail  of  cavalry 
and  instructed  its  chief  to  go  in  pursuit  of 
the  highwaymen,  and  to  bring  them  to 
him,  dead  or  alive.  They  were  captured, 
marched  at  a  double-quick  to  the  camp,  and 
shot  forthwith,  by  sentence  of  a  drum-head 
court-martial,  a  proceeding  which  did  more 
than  almost  anything  else  could  have  done, 
to  intimidate  other  bands  of  a  like  kind. 
At  another  time  I  took  to  the  same  officer's 
camp  a  number  of  stolen  horses  which  a 
party  of  us  had  managed  to  recapture  from 
a  sleeping  band  of  desperadoes.  Some  of 
the  horses  we  recognized  as  the  property 
of  our  neighbors,  some  we  did  not  know  at 
all,  and  one  or  two  were  branded  "  C.  S." 
and  "  U.  S."  The  general  promptly  returned 
all  the  identified  horses,  and  lent  all  the 
others  to  farmers  in  need  of  them. 

After  a  little  time  most  of  the  ex-soldiers 
returned   to  their  homes,  and  finding  that 


The  End,  and  After.         251 

there  were  enough  of  us  in  the  county  in 
which  I  lived  to  exercise  a  much-needed 
police  supervision  if  we  had  the  necessary 
authority,  we  sent  a  committee  of  citizens 
to  Richmond  to  report  the  facts  to  the  gen 
eral  in  command  of  the  district.  He  re 
ceived  our  committee  very  cordially,  ex 
pressed  great  pleasure  in  the  discovery  that 
citizens  were  anxious  to  maintain  order 
until  a  reign  of  law  could  be  restored,  and 
granted  us  leave  to  organize  ourselves  into 
a  military  police,  with  officers  acting  under 
written  authority  from  him  ;  to  patrol  the 
country  ;  to  disarm  all  improper  or  sus 
picious  persons  ;  to  arrest  and  turn  over 
to  the  nearest  provost  marshal  all  wrong 
doers,  and  generally  to  preserve  order  by 
armed  surveillance.  To  this  he  attached 
but  one  condition,  namely,  that  we  should 
hold  ourselves  bound  in  honor  to  assist  any 
United  States  officer  who  might  require 
such  service  of  us,  in  the  suppression  of 
guerrilla  warfare.  To  this  we  were  glad 


252       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

enough  to  assent,  as  the  thing  we  dreaded 
most  at  that  time  was  the  inauguration  of 
a  hopeless,  irregular  struggle,  which  would 
destroy  the  small  chance  left  us  of  rebuild 
ing  our  fortunes  and  restoring  our  wasted 
country  to  prosperity.  We  governed  the 
county  in  which  we  lived,  until  the  estab 
lishment  of  a  military  post  at  the  county 
seat  relieved  us  of  the  task,  and  the  permis 
sion  given  us  thus  to  stamp  out  lawlessness 
saved  our  people  from  the  alternative  of 
starvation  or  dependence  upon  the  bounty 
of  the  government.  It  was  seed-time,  and 
without  a  vigorous  maintenance  of  order 
our  fields  could  not  have  been  planted  at 
all. 

It  is  difficult  to  comprehend,  and  impos 
sible  to  describe,  the  state  of  uncertainty  in 
which  we  lived  at  this  time.  We  had  sur 
rendered  at  discretion,  and  had  no  way  of 
discovering  or  even  of  guessing  what  terms 
were  to  be  given  us.  We  were  cut  off 
almost  wholly  from  trustworthy  news,  and 


The  End,  and  After.         253 

in  the  absence  of  papers  were  unable  even 
to  rest  conjecture  upon  the  expression  of 
sentiment  at  the  North.  Rumors  we  had 
in  plenty,  but  so  many  of  them  were  clearly 
false  that  we  were  forced  to  reject  them  all 
as  probably  untrue.  When  we  heard  it 
confidently  asserted  that  General  Alex 
ander  had  made  a  journey  to  Brazil  and 
brought  back  a  tempting  offer  to  emigrants, 
knowing  all  the  time  that  if  he  had  gone  he 
must  have  made  the  trip  within  the  ex 
traordinarily  brief  period  of  a  few  weeks,  it 
was  difficult  to  believe  other  news  which 
reached  us  through  like  channels,  though 
much  of  it  ultimately  proved  true.  I  think 
nobody  in  my  neighborhood  believed  the 
namor  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  assassination  until 
it  was  confirmed  by  a  Federal  soldier  whom 
I  questioned  upon  the  subject  one  day,  a 
week  or  two  after  the  event.  When  we 
knew  that  the  rumor  was  true,  we  deemed 
it  the  worst  news  we  had  heard  since  the 
surrender.  We  distrusted  President  John* 


254       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

son  more  than  any  one  else.  Regarding 
him  as  a  renegade  Southerner,  we  thought 
it  probable  that  he  would  endeavor  to  prove 
his  loyalty  to  the  Union  by  extra  severity 
to  the  South,  and  we  confidently  believed 
he  would  revoke  the  terms  offerbd  us 
in  Mr.  Lincoln's  amnesty  proclamation ; 
wherefore  there  was  a  general  haste  to  take 
the  oath  and  so  to  secure  the  benefit  of  the 
dead  president's  clemency  before  his  suc 
cessor  should  establish  harsher  conditions. 
We  should  have  regarded  Mr.  Lincoln's 
death  as  a  calamity,  even  if  it  had  come 
about  by  natural  means,  and  coming  as  it 
did  through  a  crime  committed  in  our 
name,  it  seemed  doubly  a  disaster. 

With  the  history  of  the  South  during  the 
period  of  reconstruction,  all  readers  are 
familiar,  and  it  is  only  the  state  of  affairs 
between  the  time  of  the  surrender  and  the 
beginning  of  the  rebuilding,  that  I  have 
tried  to  describe  in  this  chapter.  But  the 
picture  would  be  inexcusably  incomplete 


The  End,  and  After.         255 

without  some  mention  of  the  negroes. 
Their  behavior  both  during  and  after  the 
war  may  well  surprise  anybody  not  ac 
quainted  with  the  character  of  the  race. 
When  the  men  of  the  South  were  nearly  all 
in  the  army,  the  negroes  were  left  in  large 
bodies  on  the  plantations  with  nobody  to 
control  them  except  the  women  and  a  few 
old  or  infirm  men.  They  might  have  been 
insolent,  insubordinate,  and  idle,  if  they 
had  chosen.  They  might  have  gained 
their  freedom  by  asserting  it.  They  might 
have  overturned  the  social  and  political 
fabric  at  any  time,  and  they  knew  all  this 
too.  They  were  intelligent  enough  to  know 
that  there  was  no  power  on  the  plantations 
capable  of  resisting  any  movement  they 
might  choose  to  make.  They  did  know, 
too,  that  the  success  of  the  Federal  arms 
would  give  them  freedom.  The  fact  was 
talked  about  everywhere,  and  no  effort  was 
made  to  keep  the  knowledge  of  it  from 
them.  They  knew  that  to  assert  their 


256       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

freedom  was  to  give  immediate  success  to 
the  Union  cause.  Most  of  them  coveted 
freedom,  too,  as  the  heartiness  with  which 
they  afterwards  accepted  it  abundantly 
proves.  And  yet  they  remained  quiet, 
faithful,  and  diligent  throughout,  very  few 
of  them  giving  trouble  of  any  sort,  even  on 
plantations  where  only  a  few  women  re 
mained  to  control  them.  The  reason  for 
all  this  must  be  sought  in  the  negro  char 
acter,  and  we  of  the  South,  knowing  that 
character  thoroughly,  trusted  it  implicitly. 
We  left  our  homes  and  our  helpless  ones  in 
the  keeping  of  the  Africans  of  our  house 
holds,  without  any  hesitation  whatever. 
We  knew  these  faithful  and  affectionate 
people  too  well  to  fear  that  they  would 
abuse  such  a  trust.  We  concealed  nothing 
from  them,  and  they  knew  quite  as  well  as 
we  did  the  issues  at  stake  in  the  war. 

The  negro  is  constitutionally  loyal  to  his 
obligations  as  he  understands  them,  and  his 
attachments,  both  local  and  personal,  are 


The  End,  and  After.         257 

uncommonly  strong.  He  speedily  forgets 
an  injury,  but  never  a  kindness,  and  so  he 
was  not  likely  to  rise  in  arms  against  the 
helpless  women  and  children  whom  he  had 
known  intimately  and  loved  almost  rever 
entially  from  childhood,  however  strongly 
he  desired  the  freedom  which  such  a  rising 
would  secure  to  him.  It  was  a  failure  to 
appreciate  these  peculiarities  of  the  negro 
character  which  led  John  Brown  into  the 
mistake  that  cost  him  his  life.  Nothing  is 
plainer  than  that  he  miscalculated  the  diffi 
culty  of  exciting  the  colored  people  to  in 
surrection.  He  went  to  Harper's  Ferry, 
confident  that  when  he  should  declare  his 
purposes,  the  negroes  would  flock  to  his 
standard  and  speedily  crown  his  effort  with 
success.  They  remained  quietly  at  work 
instead,  many  of  them  hoping,  doubtless, 
that  freedom  for  themselves  and  their  fel 
lows  might  somehow  be  wrought  out,  but 
they  were  wholly  unwilling  to  make  the 
necessary  war  upon  the  whites  to  whom 
17 


258       A  Rebel's  Recollections. 

they  were  attached  by  the  strongest  possi 
ble  bonds  of  affection.  And  so  throughout 
the  war  they  acted  after  their  kind,  waiting 
for  the  issue  with  the  great,  calm  patience 
which  is  their  most  universal  character 
istic. 

When  the  war  ended,  leaving  everything 
in  confusion,  the  poor  blacks  hardly  knew 
what  to  do,  but  upon  the  whole  they  acted 
with  great  modesty,  much  consideration  for 
their  masters,  and  singular  wisdom.  A  few 
depraved  ones  took  to  bad  courses  at  once, 
but  their  number  was  remarkably  small. 
Some  others,  with  visionary  notions,  betook 
themselves  to  the  cities  in  search  of  easier 
and  more  profitable  work  than  any  they 
had  ever  done,  and  many  of  these  suffered 
severely  from  want  before  they  found  em 
ployment  again.  The  great  majority  waited 
patiently  for  things  to  adjust  themselves  in 
their  new  conditions,  going  on  with  their 
work  meanwhile,  and  conducting  them 
selves  with  remarkable  modesty.  I  saw 


The  End,  and  After.         259 

much  of  them  at  this  time,  and  I  heard  of 
no  case  in  which  a  negro  voluntarily  re 
minded  his  master  of  the  changed  relations 
existing  between  them,  or  in  any  other  way 
offended  against  the  strictest  rules  of  pro 
priety. 

At  my  own  home  the  master  of  the  man 
sion  assembled  his  negroes  immediately 
after  the  surrender  ;  told  them  they  were 
free,  and  under  no  obligation  whatever  to 
work  for  him  ;  and  explained  to  them  the 
difficulty  he  found  in  deciding  what  kind 
of  terms  he  ought  to  offer  them,  inasmuch 
as  he  was  wholly  ignorant  upon  the  subject 
of  the  wages  of  agricultural  laborers.  He 
told  them,  however,  that  if  they  wished  to 
go  on  with  the  crop,  he  would  give  them 
provisions  and  clothing  as  before,  and  at 
the  end  of  the  year  would  pay  them  as  high 
a  rate  of  wages  as  any  paid  in  the  neigh 
borhood.  To  this  every  negro  on  the  place 
agreed,  all  of  them  protesting  that  they 
wanted  no  better  terms  than  for  their  mas- 


260       A  RebeCs  Recollections. 

ter  to  give  them  at  the  end  of  the  year 
whatever  he  thought  they  had  earned. 
They  lost  not  an  hour  from  their  work, 
and  the  life  upon  the  plantation  underwent 
no  change  whatever  until  its  master  was 
forced  by  a  pressure  of  debt  to  sell  his  land. 
I  give  the  history  of  the  adjustment  on  this 
plantation  as  a  fair  example  of  the  way  in 
which  ex-masters  and  ex-slaves  were  dis 
posed  to  deal  with  each  other. 

There  were  cases  in  which  no  such  har 
monious  adjustment  could  be  effected,  but, 
so  far  as  my  observation  extended,  these 
were  exceptions  to  the  common  rule,  and 
even  now,  after  a  lapse  of  nine  years,  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  negroes  remain, 
either  as  hired  laborers  or  as  renters  of 
small  farms,  on  the  plantations  on  which 
they  were  born. 


Jl:  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 


Complete  Catalogues  sent 
on  application 


By  GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON 


The  American  Immortals 

The  Record  of  Men  who  by  their  Achievements  in  Statecraft, 
War,  Science,  Literature,  Art,  Law,  and  Commerce  have 
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WORKS  ON  THE  CIVIL  WAR 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  A '  Concise  Account 
of  the  War  in  the  United  States  of  America  between  1861  and 
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two  years  of  the  war  his  history  will  certainly  rank  with  the  best." — New  York 
Mail  and  Express. 

THE   AMERICAN    WAR    BALLADS    AND    LYRICS. 

Edited  by  GEORGE  GARY  EGGLESTON.  A  selection  of  the  more 
noteworthy  of  the  Ballads  and  Lyrics  which  were  produced 
during  the  Colonial  period,  the  Indian  Wars,  the  Revolution,  the 
War  of  1812,  the  Mexican  War,  and  the  Civil  \Var.  The  latter 
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ULYSSES  S.  GRANT,  and  the  Period  of  National  Pres 
ervation  and  Reconstruction.  1822-1885.  By  WILLIAM 
CONANT  CHURCH,  late  Lieut. -Colonel,  U.S.A.,  author  of  "  Life 
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associated." — Rochester  Democrat  and  Chronicle. 

ROBERT  E.  LEE,  and  the  Southern  Confederacy.  1807- 
1870.  By  Prof.  HENRY  ALEXANDER  WHITE,  of  Washington 
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NEW  YORK— G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS— LONDON 


. 


*-"• 


REC'D  LD 

APR  14  1960 


CIRC  DSPf     MAR  20 '74        * 


21-100m-n 


202/7 


